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THE GENESIS OF CHRISTIAN ART 


THE MACMILLAN COMPANY 
NEW YORK -: BOSTON + CHICAGO +» DALLAS 
ATLANTA + SAN FRANCISCO 


MACMILLAN & CO., LiuitEp 
LONDON + BOMBAY ° CALCUTTA 
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TORONTO 


THE GENE S185 10 82% 
OF CHRISTIAL eR” 


BY 





THOMAS ‘O’HAGAN, M.A., PH.D., LITT.D., LL.D. 


Member of the Authors’ Club, London, England 
and of the Dante Society, Florence, Italy 


UE 


Dre 


New Work 
THE MACMILLAN COMPANY 
1926 


All rights reserved 


Copyright, 1926, 
By THE MACMILLAN COMPANY 





Set up and electrotyped. 
Published March, 1926. 


Printed in the United States of America by 
THE FERRIS PRINTING COMPANY, NEW YORK, 


To 
The Verv Reverend Daniel E. Hudson, C.S.C., LL.D. 
of Notre Dame University, Indiana, in Felicitation 
at the Completion of his Fiftieth Year 
as Editor of the Ave Maria. 





INTRODUCTION 


This study of Christian Art aims at developing in the 
student or lover of art a consciousness of the great and 
important part which Religion has at all times played, 
from the very foundation of Christianity, in the progress 
and development of Architecture, Sculpture and Paint- 
ing. The Church has ever, in her fostering care, 
watched over and tended carefully the divine dreams of 
the soul as these found expression from time to time, 
through the creative genius of the architect, the sculptor 
or the painter. 

In truth, this work might well bear the title, “The 
Spiritual Ebb and Flow of Christian Art’’; for it 
registers upon the white shores of the centuries the 
momentum of each art-wave traced through the 
spiritual evolution of the times. It will be seen, too 
that Art, like Religion, has had its barren days— 
spiritual eclipses—when man, for the moment, forgot 
his divine destiny and the things of the earth shut out 
the vision of God. 

Despite, however, the intervening of these dim or 
twilight years, Christian art as an expression, in terms of 
divine beauty, of man’s relation to God continued to 
bear witness to its spiritual mission, revealing itself from 
time to time to the soul of man in all the splendour of 
the artist’s dreams, 

7 


8 INTRODUCTION 


In order that the student or connoisseur of art may 
gain a full and rounded knowledge of the work of the 
great masters, the writer has discussed in an extended 
way their life, art, and works, and in listing their 
paintings and sculpture in the various galleries of 
Europe has, it will be observed, omitted little of import- 
ance. 


To understand and fully appreciate the meaning and 
significance of Christian art, we must have an intelligent 
knowledge of its sources of inspiration. Because of this, 
the writer has deemed it well to discuss, in two chapters, 
the relation of the Blessed Virgin and the Saints to 
Christian art. Assuredly it is of little import to discuss 
conventionally the Sistine Madonna, if we do not know 
the story of the Madonna through the centuries. It 
has been thought well also to discuss briefly in an open- 
ing chapter the art of the Ancient world, enabling there- 
by the student of art to understand and appreciate more 
fully by contrast the spirit and import of Christian art. 


The Author is under obligation for valuable data in 
the preparation of this book to the following works: 
Rio’s Poetry of Christian Art; Emma Louise Parry’s 
The Two Great Art Epochs; Natali and Vitelli’s Storia 
dell Arte; M. E. Tabor’s The Saints in Art; Mrs. Jenner’s 
Our Lady in Art; the series of monographs by Mr. Van 
Dyke on the art galleries of Europe; and Ralph Adams 
Cram’s admirable work, The Gothic Quest. Let us add 
to these the valuable works very kindly placed at our 
disposal in the Grosvenor Library, Buffalo, New York, 
one of the best art libraries in America. 


THomas O’HAGAN. 
Toronto, Canada, Dec. 8, 1925. 


CONTENTS 


PAGE 
POEPERIANICPION ete et sir oe stare alte ar ale ee NG Oe ore ele welalel iar 7 
CHAPTER 
Lee CART IN THI ANCIENT WORLD. ibs ci60'e tiers as celela cle wae elec 11 
Tito LHe DAWN OF. CHRISTIAN ART 2.\0 0/0 vec wc ce eevee deus 19 
III. THe SIGNIFICANCE OF THE BLESSED VIRGIN IN ART..... 31 
Vee PME SAINT SIN MARS aan Sera al LIT ai allutal ¢ Sibley sath Qt atads 39 
VY. Tue DEVELOPMENT OF THE CHRISTIAN IDEALIN ART.... 52 
View (BYZANTING AND ROMANBSQUI? Foie) cle elle sile ia Ga ele ioe 58 
VII. Tue Fuitt AWAKENING OF CHRISTIAN ART............. 65 
Vition Can EVOLUTION OF THE GOTHIC? oie ss oleic aids ule eters ant 70 


IX. Tue Caruouic CHURCH AND THE ITALIAN RENAISSANCE. 80 


X. WHERE THE ArT SEEDS WERE QUICKENED ............ 86 
POUR OTABLM OOULPTORS si). 4'<5 n+ 's d.sis'm 5. 4.shers;b)0\9 Byes, date 94 
XII. Grorro—OrcaGna—FRA ANGELICO..............0000- 101 
XIMW-. = Tue Mysric Scuoon or PAInTInNG...........6..600005 109 
DN PSAMONMBDNAUANDUART CS OCS) fe isi teis ge gee biktehle'd sou 113 


XV. Tue Great Art TRIUMVIRATE OF THE RENAISSANCE....120 
XVI. Ractau ConTRIBUTIONS TO CHRISTIAN ART..........-.. 136 


XVII. Tse Curer Art GALLERIES OF EUROPE WITH THEIR 
PP ORPT ENTS NEES Oe ae ENON le PRGRCEE Neat wa 142 





THE GENESIS OF CHRISTIAN ART 


CHAPTER I 
ART IN THE ANCIENT WORLD 


The nations of antiquity have left us a record—a 
manuscript of their spirit, in their art, which, when 
properly interpreted, is a key to and reflection of their 
civilization and culture. Art, like civilization, owes its 
beginnings to the East—exr Oriente lux. Egypt, the 
cradle of art exerted upon the art of the neighbouring 
countries an influence similar to that which Greece 
later exercised on the basin of the Mediterranean. 

Both Chaldea and Babylon, in their art, owe much to 
Egyptian sculpture, which was essentially symbolical. 
But neither the Hebrew people nor the Phoenicians did 
anything for art. The former, in their sacred writings, 
have given us a wealth of poetry; while the latter were 
the English of antiquity, planting colonies in Cyprus, 
Crete, Asia Minor, Sicily, Carthage, Malta and Cadiz in 
Spain—merchants in touch with Asia, Africa, and 
Europe. Egypt, which is designated the mother of 
civilization, still remains, as regards the beginnings of 
its art, something of amystery. The ancient land of the 
Pharaohs is strewn with obelisks, sphinxes, temples and 
tombs. Like Greece, Egypt, it seems, however, had but 
little painting. The Egyptian art-mind was a massive 
one; yet it is a mistake to consider that it was a mind 
buried in gloom. In Egypt as in Greece religious belief 
was the centre and source of all art effort. 

It may be worth noting here that the Egyptian 

At 


12 THE GENESIS OF CHRISTIAN ART 


Dynasties that have left us the greatest memorials in art 
are the Fourth, Twelfth, Eighteenth and Nineteenth. 
The Memphite remains belong to the Fourth Dynasty. 
Of this dynasty is the beautiful and colossal statue of 
Chephren, now in the Gizeh Museum. Among the 
rulers of Egypt Rameses II carries off the palm for the 
number of statues erected to him. At Ipsamboul, not 
far from Luxor, is a huge temple built by Rameses II to 
commemorate his Nubian victories. It was at Luxor 
that the recent important find of the rich tomb of King 
Tutankhamen was made. As regards the ancient archi- 
tecture of the East, it may be said that the architecture 
of Egypt was that of temples and of mystery and sym- 
bolism, while the Assyrian was the architecture of 
fortification and fighting, and the Persian that of 
palaces. The museums of Cairo, Rome, Turin and 
Florence possess valuable samples of Egyptian art. 

In the East, in ancient times, the individual had no 
value; man was not a citizen, but a subject. It was 
under the luminous skies of Greece that the arts, freeing 
themselves from the fetters of Eastern despotism and 
theocracy, first revealed to the world a human person- 
ality. It was in Greece that the individual, for the first 
time, began to have a recognized value. Here the 
subject became a citizen. Here not one but many are 
free. Though of course we know it to be a fact that both 
Plato and Aristotle justified slavery. 

It may be asked why Greece became such a seed-bed 
and cradle of art. First through its position; geographi- 
cally situated as it was, it became a seaway to strangers; 
and, then, through the division of its people into small 
communities cut off from each other by mountains— 
this gave access to other peoples and developed an 


ART IN THE ANCIENT WORLD 13 


individuality and the desire to excel, together with an 
ardent love of glory and a laudable rivalry in the cultiva- 
tion of the fine arts. The same thing happened in the 
Italy of the Communes, the cradle of modern art. Of 
course the art of Greece, like its religion, owed some- 
thing to the East. The influence of Asia upon the 
civilization and art of Greece came through Asia Minor 
and Phoenicia; and the first city in Greece to be touched 
by this influence was Athens. 

It was in architecture and sculpture that Greek genius 
has influenced most the art of the world. But it was 
really in sculpture and literature that the Greeks 
excelled. Neither Pliny nor Homer speaks of Greek 
painting; and it is worth noting, as Schliemann says, 
that there is no trace of painting in any object ever 
found in any of the five pre-historic cities of Hissarlik. 
Of course there was Apelles, who painted at the court 
of Philip of Macedon. Perhaps the three most dis- 
tinguished Greek sculptors were Phidias, Scopas, and 
Praxiteles. Phidias, who lived during the age of the 
great Greek statesman Pericles, was an idealist. Like 
Leonardo da Vinci in painting, Phidias could unite 
grandeur and minuteness. We might say here that 
beauty to the Greeks was the harmonious disposition of 
parts—unity in variety. As regards architecture, till 
we get to the Greek period of art all architecture is only 
a welter of various types of buildings. With the rise of 
Greek architecture we enter on the great course of 
European architectural development, in which one style 
arises, in historic succession, from another—Roman 
from Greek, Romanesque from Roman, Gothic from 
Romanesque, of which the perfect art of Greece is the 
fountain-head. 


14 THE GENESIS OF CHRISTIAN ART 


Greek Art periods may be divided into the Pre- 
Historic Age; the Early and Later Archaic; the Transi- 
tional; the Age of Pericles; the Age of Praxiteles and 
Scopas; and the Closing Period of Greek Art. A study 
of Greek art to be satisfactory demands a study of its 
development through the different periods; and nowhere 
is this more necessary than in the study of Greek sculp- 
ture. The great inspiration of Greek art is its growth, 
something not found in all the centuries of Oriental art. 
It should be noted, too, that the migration that brought 
the rude and uncultivated Dorians into Greece drove 
the other tribes to all the Mediterranean lands—the 
islands of the Aegean, the coast of Asia Minor, the 
islands from Cyprus to Sicily, the coast lands from 
southern Italy in the West to the Euxine coast in the 
East. 

Like the Egyptian, Greek was essentially a temple 
architecture, marked by its three chief styles, Doric, 
Tonic, and Corinthian. The Parthenon at Athens is 
Doric. Of the three styles the most essentially Greek is 
the Doric. The Parthenon was erected in 440 B.c. after 
the final triumph of the Athenians over the Persians. 
It was the Corinthian style that the Romans carried on 
and developed. A good example of this may be seen 
in the Maison Caree at Nimes in France. 

It is marvellous the influence of Greek genius upon 
the art and literature of the world. For instance, what 
does not mediaeval and modern philosophy owe to Plato 
and Aristotle; mediaeval and modern sculpture to 
Phidias and Praxiteles; and the glorious temples of the 
Christian world to the beauty and symmetry and repose 
of the Parthenon? Truly it may be said, indeed, that 
the Greeks still rule us from their urns. 


ART IN THE ANCIENT WORLD 15 


The Romans were the inheritors of the Greek ideals of 
plastic art. They were the heirs of Greece, in its civili- 
zation, art, and culture. Being a people highly intellec- 
tual and of great refinement of taste, the Greeks would 
scarcely admit an ornament in their architecture unless 
it were the best. Their genius was largely expended in 
the building of temples; whereas the Romans, a conquer- 
ing race and possessed of little aesthetic refinement, 
desired above all a rich and sumptuous effect in their 
buildings. The Greeks, who were essentially religious 
and essentially artists, admired aesthetic perfection, 
while the Romans, who were primarily political, sub- 
ordinated beauty to utility, and perfection to grandeur 
and majesty. Likewise the Romans, to whom the 
aesthetic and ethical were the same, converted Zeus into 
Jove, Athena into Minerva, Hera into Juno, and Hermes 
into Mercury. So wherever the arms of Rome tri- 
umphed, Roman genius spread tokens of her art. In 
Africa, Syria, Asia Minor, Gaul, Spain, on the Danube, 
the Nile, the Rhine, there was created and constructed 
now a coliseum, now an aqueduct, now a column of 
victory, now a triumphal arch. But while the Romans 
were a practical people, colony-planters and law-givers, 
they did not disdain to beautify their villas and gardens 
with Greek art. Even before the downfall of Greece, 
Rome had felt such an admiration for Greek art that 
she early despoiled the Greek colonies of southern Italy 
and Sicily of their art. 

In a study of Roman art it will be observed how, es- 
pecially during the closing days of the Republic, the 
Roman artists imitated and copied the Greek works of 
art. The great influx of Greek masterpieces in Rome 
gave inspiration to the Roman artist; and henceforth 


16 THE GENESIS OF CHRISTIAN ART 


Roman art made rapid strides. This development is 
especially seen in the Roman portrait sculpture of the 
time—in such statues as those of Julius Caesar, Cicero 
and Pompey. | 

In imperial times true Roman art reached its zenith, 
especially during the reign of Augustus, from 30 B.c. to 
14 a.p. This may be regarded as the golden age of 
Roman art. Take, for instance, the Column of Trajan, 
standing today in excellent preservation in Trajan’s 
Forum in Rome, which tells the story of his Dacian 
expedition. It is one hundred and forty-seven feet high, 
ten feet in diameter, and made of thirty-four blocks of 
marble. This is a marvellous sculptural document 
attesting to the character of Roman warfare, the build- 
ing of walls and bridges, the marches, battles and 
victories; in a word, the whole campaign is set forth in 
all its dramatic bearings. Again, the various arches of 
triumph, such as that of Titus and that of Constantine, 
are a witness to the Roman art of the time. The sar- 
cophagus reliefs may be regarded as the last efforts 
of Roman art. 

As regards painting under the Roman Empire, it will 
be well for the student to visit Pompeii near Naples, 
‘which, together with Herculaneum and Stabiae was 
overwhelmed and buried by an eruption of Vesuvius in 
79 A.D. Pompeii was not in reality Roman; it resembled 
more a provincial Greek town. By the excavations that 
took place about the middle of the last century, the 
city with its art was finally revealed to the world. 

The early settlers of Pompeii were Greeks from neigh- 
bouring southern Italy, Magna Graecia. Even when it 
became Romanized, it still remained Greek in spirit, 
the temples and theatres being Greek, and the themes 


ART IN THE ANCIENT WORLD 17 


of its art Greek legends and heroes. Pompeii is truly a 
link with the past. It will also repay the student to go 
to Pompeii because of the knowledge acquired there of a 
Roman house, with its halls and court, its atrium and 
its portico. The House of the Vetii brothers will afford 
also an excellent idea of the luxurious character of a 
Roman home, with its frescoed walls, decorated and 
alive with legends, satyrs, bacchantes, and cupids. 

We must not forget here to note that according to 
Virgil in the second book of his Georgics (lines 532-535), 
Rome was born in the fusion of three elements: the 
Latin, Sabine, and Etruscan; and that Roman art, es- 
pecially early Roman art, owed a good deal to the latter. 
According to Herodotus, the Etruscans came into 
Italy from Asia Minor, and were of an ancient Aegean 
race. They settled in Italy about 1000 B.c., overran 
modern Tuscany, known as Etruria; and also conquered 
Umbria. There were fourteen chief Etrurian cities. Of 
these the most important were Volaterrae (modern 
Volaterra), Faesulae (modern Fiesole), Cortona (mod- 
ern Cortona), Clustum (modern Chiusi), Perusia 
(modern Perugia). Clusium was the city of Lars 
Porsena, who attempted to restore the Tarquin Kings 
after they had been driven out of Rome 360 B.c. 
Macaulay refers to this in his ballad “Horatio at the 
Bridge.” 

Shame on the false Etruscan 
Who lingers in his home, 


When Porsena of Clusium 
Is on the march to Rome. 


Pliny gives a description of the tomb of Porsena at 
Clusium. What remains of the primitive civilization of 
the Etruscans shows their affiliation with Oriental 


18 THE GENESIS OF CHRISTIAN ART 


civilization and customs. There is little doubt, too, 
that they were influenced considerably in their art by 
the Ionian Greeks who had settled in the south of Italy. 
Up to the fifth century B.c. Etruscan art developed by 
itself. In commerce and navigation the Etruscans 
resembled the Phoenicians. They founded Adria, which 
gave its name to the Adriatic Sea. Etruscan art reached 
its height 600-300 B.c. In 294 B.c. the chief Etruscan 
towns surrendered to Rome. Their architectural 
remains are walls and gates of cities. A splendid sample 
of an Etruscan gate or archway is the Porta Augusta at 
Perugia. The style of their sculpture resembles a good 
deal that of the Egyptians. It was especially orna- 
mental in their tombs. It may be said, however, that 
the Etruscans lacked artistic feeling. Perhaps the best 
museums in which to gain a knowledge of Etruscan art 
are the Etruscan museum, in the Vatican, and the 
museum of Perugia. 


CHAPTER II 


THE DAWN OF CHRISTIAN ART 


The transition from the Ancient world of art to that 
of the Christian, signifies the quitting of the world of 
Pagan ideals for a world of the Christian soul-life which 
fills a new universe of human experience, marked by 
spiritual thought and Christian aspiration. Indeed, it 
is spiritual thought and Christian aspiration that con- 
stitute the new sphere of art. The old civilization has 
passed away, supplanted by new conditions, new ideals. 
The advent of Christianity gave a new meaning to life— 
a new significance to art. Greek art reflected not the 
life beyond. It pulsed with the throbbing and sensuous 
joy of outer life and glad nature-worship. The faith of 
the early Christian looked to a life beyond. He lived, 
and his art lives, in terms of eternity. The allurement of 
the temporal and material is now lost in the eternal and 


invisible. Now it is the things of the soul that count. | 


As a critic has said: ‘““To understand the new art we | 


must bring the invisible into full play.” This same 
critic tells us that the early Christians approached art in 
a spirit of fear and timidity. Hearkening to the com- 
mandment to worship the Lord in spirit, they turned 
from the Pagan temples, with their images, as something 
abhorrent and savouring of idolatry. Is it to be 
wondered at, then, that the early Christians did not 
interest themselves in the Pagan, artistic creations 
around them, but sought rather the sure and lasting 
19 


Teen 


20 », THE GENESIS OF CHRISTIAN ART, 


things of the soul? The saints and martyrs were of their 
household, not Venus and Mars, or Jupiter and Minerva. 
It was necessary that the new faith should create an art 
tradition of its own before it admitted into its keeping 
the less precious though beauteous creations of pagan 
art. It was Christ, not Jupiter, who reigned under the 
new order of things; it was the kingdom of Heaven 
before the kingdom of earth. Nor did these early Chris- 
tians, as it is sometimes alleged, depict and fashion an im- 
age of their Divine Master after the form of Jupiter. 
This statement is entirely without foundation in fact. 

Christian art, then, had birth in the catacombs, 
whither the early catechumens, followers of Christ, hid 
themselves away that they might escape the purple 
rage of the Caesars, and follow the teachings of their 
crucified Master. Here amid the most solemn inspira- 
tion that the world has ever known, the first Christian 
artists traced on the walls of their subterranean chapels, 
and on the tombs of their brethren in Christ, the rude 
sketches which will always be objects of reverence to 
him who has remained faithful in heart to the ancient 
faith of which these primitive paintings are an expres- 
sion or symbol. In the days of trial and persecution, 
Christian art had a higher mission to fulfil than that of 
ministering to the senses: it was to fortify the souls of 
the victims against the insistent threats of their execu- 
tioners and against the fear of death. In these cata- 
combs—and it is considered that in and around Rome 
they cover more than six hundred acres—you have 
truly the beginnings of Christian art; an art so humble, 
as some writer has said, that one can scarcely realize 
that here is the germ of the glorious achievement of the 
coming centuries. 


_ THE DAWN OF CHRISTIAN ART 21 


During the persecutions of the third century, the 
catacombs of St. Callista, St. Priscilla, St. Agnes, and St. 
Sebastian were formed. In these catacombs, there 
is little work of the sculptor. The width of the passages 
is usually from two and one-half feet to five feet, the 
height, eight feet. The loculi or tombs are cut in the 
walls lengthwise, on each of the passages, often in four or 
five rows one above the other. The inscriptions and 
_ symbols, a kind of picture-writing expressive of the faith 
and hope of the departed saint, are on the wall-slabs 
covering the tombs. Many of those found in the late 
excavations have been placed in the great Christian! 
museum of St. John in Lateran. ) 

It may be stated here that Christian painting differed | 
from that of Graeco-Roman in having less technical | 
accuracy, and in being symbolic. Some of the pictures, 
however, in the catacomb of St. Callista are among the 
most beautiful that antiquity has handed down. Now, 
as the Christians could not create a new beauty, they 
imitated the classic models, allegorizing to serve the new 
faith. The dove, the lamb, the fish, and especially the | 
good shepherd bearing back the lost sheep to the fold 
were the prevailing subjects of symbols that found repre- 
sentation in the rude inscriptions on the walls and tombs 
of these ‘“‘dormitories” of the early Christians in Rome. 

It may be well to add here that the earliest represen- 
tation of the Twelve Apostles was that of twelve sheep 
surrounding Christ, the Good Shepherd, while He bore a 
lamb in His arms. The sheep issue from two cities, 
Jerusalem and Bethlehem. Sometimes Christ is 
represented as the Lamb of God on an eminence from 
which flow the four rivers of Paradise. Rarely are the 
Apostles represented as doves, as in the mosaic in the 


22 THE GENESIS OF CHRISTIAN ART 


Basilica of St. Clement in Rome. As to the four 
Evangelists, St. Matthew is represented by the cherub, 
because he speaks more of the human than the divine 
nature; St. Mark is symbolized by the lion, particularly 
because he dwells on the royal dignity of Christ; St. 
Luke was given the ox because he especially sets forth 
the priesthood of Christ; and St. John is represented by 
the eagle as an emblem of the lofty flights of his imagina- 
tion, and his keen gaze upon truth. It is worthy of 
noting that the favourite composition of the Christians 
of Rome in those early days was the figure of Christ 
between the two great pillars of the Church, St. Peter 
and St. Paul. As to the likeness or appearance of the 
Blessed Virgin, there has never been a continuous type, 
though there has always existed a traditional type of 
Christ. 

The acceptance of the new faith by Constantine after 
the battle of the Milvian Bridge, 312 a.p., and the 
proclamation of Christianity as the official religion of 
the Empire following the persecutions of the third 
century, gave the first great impulse to Christian art. 
The catacombs were soon emptied of the lowly followers 
of the Nazarene. The Church came out from its hiding 
place and proclaimed its mission; and out of the needs of 
the new religion was born Christian art, rude and crude, 
if you will. Thus arose the necessity for a new archi- 
tecture for places of worship where all could congregate; 
and hence we find appearing an original and dis- 
tinctively Christian architecture. 

It may be asked here, why was it that the School of 
Art which originated in the catacombs appeared to 
expire like a lamp which is no longer supplied with oil? 
To this a well-known art critic returns answer: 


THE DAWN OF CHRISTIAN ART 23 


Among a people who had embraced Christianity 
in all its fullness, it was impossible for art to die so 
long as the imaginations were animated by faith; 
it was the traditions borrowed from an order of 
ideas which had forever disappeared that were 
destined to expire; but the genius of Christianity in 
refusing to be clothed in a form which only befitted 
its infancy, gave no signs on that account of declen- 
sion or languor; on the contrary, it was the 
consciousness of strength which enabled it to dis- 
embarrass itself of antiquated forms sure of creating 
new ones better adapted to the high mission it was 
called to fulfil. It was a death destined to be 
followed by a glorious resurrection. 

There has been much controversy through the cen- 
turies as to the origin of the plan and the prototype of 
the early Christian church. The accepted theory is that 
the courts or justice halls known to the Romans as 
basilicas were changed into places of Christian worship; 
and so the early churches were called basilicas. This is 
borne out by the great resemblance between the ground 
plan of these courts and such early church structures as 
the Basilica of St. Paul Outside the Walls in Rome. In 
many cases the beautiful columns of the pagan temples 
were used as constructive materials by the Christians; 
and beside the church arose a bell tower or campanile, 
later to be merged in the Romanesque and Gothic 
towers. An adjunct of the church was often the 
baptistry, a small circular building containing the 
baptismal font. When baptism by immersion went out, 
the baptistry as a separate building ceased. The circu- 
lar form of the baptistry was derived from the ancient 
Etruscans through the Romans. 


24 THE GENESIS OF CHRISTIAN ART 


It should be noted here that Constantine had estab- 
lished his capital in the Greek seaport town of Byzan- 
tium, 328 a.D., calling it Constantinople. Before quitting 
Rome the first Christian Emperor was instrumental in 
erecting four great basilicas: St. Peter’s, St. John in 
Lateran, St. Paul’s Outside the Walls, and the Basilica 
' of the Holy Cross in Jerusalem. Henceforth it will be 
" well to remember that we shall have to deal with the 
Eastern Roman Empire and the Western Roman 
Empire, and that henceforth, too, art will be influenced 
by the prevailing ideals in the East and the West. 

We have indicated the origin of early Christian 
architecture; let us note here one of the most important 
offerings of early Christian art—the mosaic. This form 
~ of decoration was known even to the Egyptians and had 
been in use among the Greeks and Romans; but the 
possibilities of its development into the sphere of church 
decoration had never been foreseen. It may be said that 
mosaics witnessed the advent of Christianity. The 
‘Eeyptians usedthe mosaic for jewélry;" while the 
Romans made floors of it. It is to the Romans that we 
owe its development into one of the great arts of the 
world. 

The first mosaics of official Christianity are to be seen 
in the little Church of Santa Constanza, in the via 
Nomentana, Rome, a circular building built to receive 
the tomb of Constantia, the daughter of Constantine. 
Then we have the mosaics in the Church of Santa 
Pudenziana, which is generally regarded as the oldest 
church in Rome, followed by mosaics in the churches of 
Santa Maria in Trastevere, SS. Cosmas and Damian, 
the subterranean Basilica of St. Clement, Santa Maria 
Maggiore with its rich mosaic floor and its splendid 


THE DAWN OF CHRISTIAN ART 25 


mosaics in the tribune; and in St. John Lateran we have 
mosaics of the fifth century in the baptistry. It may be 
said here that the early mosaics are the best; and one of 
these, representing the Redeemer and Saints, is in the 
Church of St. Pudenziana, a fourth century mosaic. 

But perhaps the mosaic is revealed in its richest 
splendour, not in Rome, but in Ravenna, hard by the 
Adriatic, which for a time remained the Capital of the 
Western Empire, and the residence of the exarchs in 
552 A.D. This now desolate and almost deserted city 
was once the stage of the world’s great drama. In 404 
A.D. the Emperor Honorius moved the Roman Court to 
Ravenna. It was during the residence at Ravenna of 
Galla Placidia, the sister of Honorius, and her son, 
Valentinian, and the era of Justinian, the Emperor, that 
mosaic decoration in the churches of Ravenna reached 
an unparalleled magnificence. Then were built the 
beautiful little sepulchral Chapel of Galla Placidia, the 
Churches of San Vitale, San Apollinare Nuova, and San 
Apollinare in Classe. Perhaps the most impressive of 
the mosaics are those in the Church of San Apollinare in 
Nuova. Referring to the importance of Ravenna as an 
early art centre, Muther, the German art critic, says: 
“What Pompeii was for the antique, what Bruges for the 
Flemish, what Rothenburg for the German Middle 
Ages, this Ravenna is for early Christian art.”’ 

When we turn to Constantinople we find that the 
mosaic which began to be used as a vehicle of Christian 
art in the fourth century became a decoration of great 
splendour in the Capital of the East. Perhaps the 
greatest of all mosaic works in extent were those carried 
out under the Emperor Justinian in St. Sophia (Hagia 
Sophia) in Constantinople. The most perfected Byzan- 


26 THE GENESIS OF CHRISTIAN ART 


tine style of architecture, too, in the East dates from the 
time of Justinian. The earliest church still existing in 
Constantinople is the Basilica of St. John, built about 
the middle of the fifth century. These churches are of 
mixed style being composed of Graeco-Roman and 
Oriental elements. 

In our discussion of the architecture of this period we 
must always remember the influence of the Orient upon 
Byzantine; and the influence of the East upon the West. 
The form of church used most in the West at this time 
was a nave supported on columns and an atrium, and 
examples of this style are found both in Byzantium and 
Rome. The sixth century saw churches of this kind 
erected outside of Constantinople and Rome, at 
Ravenna, in Istria and in Africa. The latter had some 
magnificent basilicas such as the great Basilica of St. 
Cyprian. ‘These witness to the tragic days of the 
Church in Africa, its original seat and centre being 
Carthage. Within recent years nearly two hundred of 
these churches have been discovered and laid bare with 
their mosaic floors and eternal pictures in stone. 
Archaeologists regard these basilicas as superior to those 
of Rome, which no longer exist in their original form as 
do the churches in Africa, being built over and modified 
through the centuries. 

Beginning with the seventh century, the contrast 
between the art of the Eastern Empire and that of the ~ 
Western became more marked. It may be said that 
after the age of Justinian, pure Byzantine art declined 
in Constantinople, the most beautiful buildings for the 
next epoch being built for the Mohammedan conquerors 
of Syria and Egypt by Greek masters. Meantime, 
however, in the West, in southern Italy, Sicily, and even 


THE DAWN OF CHRISTIAN ART 27 


Gaul and northern Italy, Byzantine art was gaining 
supremacy in all the branches of art as well as in archi- 
tecture. An example of the latter may be seen in the 
seventh-century Byzantine Cathedral of Santa Maria in 
the small town of Torcello some six miles north-east of 
Venice, which contains a gorgeous twelfth-century 
mosaic representing biblical scenes. 

Into much of the early Church architecture in the 
West there entered a blending of many styles; for as the 
Byzantine was influenced in Constantinople, in response 
to ideas derived from Armenia and the East, so having 
changed its habitat from the East to the West, the 
Byzantine was modified by local elements and developed 
into a new style of architecture which may be designated 
the Church architecture of the West. Speaking of this 
art blending, Ralph Adams Cram writes: 


During the first five centuries of the Christian era} 
the Church had been fighting for life, first against 
a dying imperialism, then against barbarian 
invasions. The removal of the temporal authority 
to Constantinople had continued the traditions of 
civilization where Greek, Roman and Asiatic ele- 
ments were fused in a curious alembic, one result of 
which was an architectural style that later and 
modified by many peoples was to serve as the 
foundation-stone of the Catholic architecture of the 
West. 


As regards the character of church architecture that 
prevailed in Rome during those early centuries, it may 
be designated as Latin or Romanesque. Following the 
time of Constantine it was Latin, and this was closely 
connected with some forms of Roman architecture. The 


rete 


28 THE GENESIS OF CHRISTIAN ART 


term Romanesque may be applied to the whole period 
between the decline of Roman and rise of Gothic. The 
basilica type of church is to be found in greater numbers 
in Rome than in any other neighbourhood, and pre- 
vailed there for a longer period than elsewhere owing to 
the influence of Church traditions. 

Now, as to some of the factors which led to different 
ideals in the art of the East and the West, first there was 
the division of opinion as to the personal appearance of 
Christ, St. Cyril maintaining that our Divine Lord was 
the least comely of men, basing his opinion on Tertullian 
and St. Justin; while St. John Chrysostom and St. 
Gregory of Nyssa held the opposite view. There was 
the same difference of opinion as to the corporal beauty 
of the Blessed Virgin. This accented the fundamental 
types of painting in the East and the West, and formed 
an art schism to prelude the religious schism of Photius. 

Nor should we forget here to mention the effect which 
the storm of Iconoclasm that broke out in the East had 
upon art. It will be remembered that the iconoclastic 
Emperor Leo III, who had issued a decree in 726 a.p. 
that all images should be banished from the Eastern — 
Church, threatened to break the venerated image of 
St. Peter and drag Pope Gregory II, loaded with chains, 
to the foot of the imperial throne. 

At the beginning of the ninth century a new element 
was infused into art—the Germanic. This new school 
which took form we will designate the Germano-Chris- 
tian School. The new element infused new blood into 
the impoverished veins of the ancient world. This 
Germano-Christian School, Rio, in his admirable work 
“The Poetry of Christian Art,’’ compares to a vigorous 
shoot set in a better soil. Then came a little later the 


THE DAWN OF CHRISTIAN ART 29 


portent of the catastrophe which was to overwhelm the 

world in the year 1000 a.p. This completely paralyzed 

the imagination of the artist. We have now reached the 
very night of that period termed by modern philosophy 

“the long sleep of the intellect,” and the painting of this 

time reveals the degradation that had set in quite as 

much as does the architecture, poetry, or language. 

The Romano-Christian School of painting practically 

ceased from this time to exist. 

Meantime, the Germano-Christian School of the 
North was striking down its roots vigorously and, 
following the impetus given to art and literature by 
Charlemagne early in the ninth century, a kind of 
central school of art appears to have formed itself, at 
this period, in the famous monastery of St. Gall, in 
Switzerland. Rio considers that neither the Byzantine 
nor Italian works from the ninth to the thirteenth 
century will bear comparison with the productions of 
the Germano-Christian School, which was at once ‘“more 
felicitous in its methods, more pure in the choice of its 
forms, and of greater fertility in its inventions.” 

The question arises here, how great a stimulus was 
Byzantine to the art of the West? During the warring 
time of iconoclasm in the East many Byzantine artists 
migrated to the court of Charlemagne, and again after 
the capture of Constantinople by the Crusaders early in 
the thirteenth century many Byzantine artists went to 
Italy. How far did these Byzantine artists influence the 
art of the West, especially that of Italy? Art critics 
differ as to the extent and value of this influence. 
Certainly the Byzantine influence is to be seen in the 
architecture, particularly of northern Italy and southern 
France. Cattaneo, the Italian art critic, holds that the 


30 THE GENESIS OF CHRISTIAN ART 


general style of architecture in northern Italy from the 
sixth to the eleventh century was Italo-Byzantine. The 
Byzantine impulse especially touched Venice, as may be 
seen in the Basilica of St. Mark’s. But Byzantine art 
only formed a broad bridge between Roman antiquity 
and the Middle Ages. It was a stimulus indeed to a new 
and a higher order of Christian art, into which would 
enter the deeper emotions of the soul, with all its joys 
and sorrows and its communion with nature. The sym- 
bol and allegory of the catacomb were to find after a 
thousand years a deeper and more beauteous art mean- 
ing and significance in the brush of a Giotto and a 
Raphael. As ten centuries of Christian poetry and 
philosophy speak to us through the lips of Dante and St. 
Thomas Aquinas, so ten centuries of Christian painting 
look down upon us from the frescoed vault of the Sistine 
Chapel. 

Indeed, there are not a few who hold that Byzantium 
exercised a pernicious influence on the art of Italy. It 
is quite certain that if the Greeks had conquered Italy 
then Italy could have never worked out her high destiny. 
The Byzantine impress would have been, as in Russia, 
upon everything. This is seen in the fact that Naples, 
which embraced the imperial cause, did little in creative 
art; while Venice, Lombardy, and Tuscany, on the other 
hand, display brilliant imagination in works of art; and 
at Rome the pontifical tiara rises more radiant than all — 
crowns. Byzantine art was suitable in a high degree for 
liturgy and ceremony; but it could not and did not ex- 
press as Gothic art does the joys and sorrows of the soul. 
It held no communion with nature. It was stiff, cold, 
and studied. 


CHAPTER III 


THE SIGNIFICANCE OF THE BLESSED VIRGIN 
IN ART 


The Blessed Virgin being the link between the visible 
manifestation of God in the Person of His Divine Son 
and the human nature which Christ assumed, it can be 
readily realized what a part the Mother of God has 
played in the Christian art of the world—Christian art, 
which may be designated as an expression in terms of 
divine beauty of man’s relation to God. The Blessed 
Virgin is, because of this relation to her Divine Son, 
invested with an awful dignity not attainable by any 
other created being. Dante refers to this in the thirty- 
second Canto of Jl Paradiso, in the ““Divine Comedy,” 
in lines 85-87: 

Reguarda omai ne la faccia ch’ a Cristo 


Piu si somiglia che la sua chiarezza 
Sola ti puo disporre a veder Cristo. 


[Look now into the face that unto Christ 
Hath most resemblance, for its brightness only 
Is able to prepare thee to see Christ.] 


It is interesting to note, in the study of Christian art, 
that every age has occupied itself with some particular 
aspect of Christianity. Thus we find that in the cata- 
combs the symbolic prevailed when the most common 
objects of life were pressed into the service of God and 
invested with spiritual meaning. For example, in some 
of the catacombs Mary is represented with the birds 
clustering about her feet, as a pendant to Christ, the 
Good Shepherd, with the sheep around Him. 

31 


ead 


32 THE GENESIS OF CHRISTIAN ART 


But the most popular expression or representation of 
the Blessed Virgin in art, during the early centuries of 
the Church, was that of Intercessor. This prevailed in 
the East as well as in the West. The cult of Our Lady 
began with the very dawn of Christianity. In the East 
it was interrupted for a time by the fury of iconoclasm 
whereby all images and pictures of the Mother of God 
were removed from the churches. Again, when the 
blinding blast of Mohammedanism swept across the 
country, it not only sought to remove from the heart of 
man the story of man’s redemption, but also the part 
which the Mother of Christ played in the fulfilment of 
the Divine Will. It is difficult to say here what share all 
this had in the decadence of Byzantine art. | 

We will never know, and we cannot know, how great 
an influence as a civilizing force this tender devotion to 
the Mother of God has been through the centuries, not 
only in curbing and restraining the wild passions of the 
savage warrior, but in fostering that chivalrous tender- 
ness for women and children, which in time became the 
most beauteous flower of Christian civilization. Next 
to the crucifix that represents the great drama of 
Calvary, the image of Mary in due time found a place 
in the hearts and homes of all Christian people. Her ~ 
shrine, by the wayside, marked among all nations the 
progress of piety, purity, and peace. | 

But the ideal of the Mother of God has varied, at 
different epochs and with different peoples. You have 
but to look at the Virgin and Child enthroned, a mosaic 
of the sixth century, in the Church of 8. Apollinare in 
Ravenna, the Queen of Heaven in the Council’s Hall at 
Siena, painted by Simone di Martino, the enthroned 


THE BLESSED VIRGIN IN ART 33 


Madonna by Cimabue, in the Church of Santa Maria 
Novella in Florence, to realize how varied has been the 
conception of the Blessed Virgin as represented at 
different times by different artists. 

Of course the popular expression in art of the faith of 
the Church after it had been established by Constantine 
as the religion of the Empire was the figure of Christ 
Triumphant. Mary as the second Eve, spotless and 
humble, responding to the Divine Will with ‘‘Fiat 
voluntas tua!’ made possible this redemption of man; 
and so her figure invariably appears in early Christian 
art near that of Our Divine Redeemer. 

It has been, indeed, through the cult of Mary that 
woman has struck off her bondage. Wherever her 
children have been enrolled in her service, wherever her 
chapels have arisen, wherever her statues and pictures 
have graced the walls of church and home, wherever 
banners have been unfurled in her honour, the beauty 
and dignity of womanhood have been acknowledged and 
proclaimed—nay, they have gained a new import, a new 
meaning, within the sacred precincts of the cloister and 
the home. Mary has ever been a very preface to the life 
of our Divine Lord, flooding the world with the warmth 
and sunshine of her spotless soul. 

As we trace her image and picture in art, through the 
centuries, we behold Mary as Intercessor, Mother, and 
Queen. In Roman art she is the majestic, dignified and 
intense Roman matron whose chief thought and care is 
for her children. In Greek Art she is the Empress, the 
crowned lady. This latter was the prevailing type in the 
Middle Ages, and continues today in Russia and Greece. 
The Italian Renaissance broke with all this; and in 
Siena she became the Madonna full of passionate sweet- 


34 THE GENESIS OF CHRISTIAN ART 


ness and mysticism. In Florence and in Umbria she is 
the Madonna of stately graciousness, marked by abso- 
lute purity and beauty of sentiment; and this is espe- 
cially true of the Madonnas of Fra Angelico. Speaking 
of the Madonnas of Fra Angelico, a critic has said: 
“They might be described as spiritual rainbows. They 
glow with purest color and have no sign of earthliness to 
mar them. They are radiant dreams full of the deepest 
spiritual exaltation.” It is very interesting to note how 
various artists and schools have treated the subject of 
the Annunciation. For instance, compare Leonardo da 
Vinei’s Annunciation with that of Botticelli’s or with 
that of Fra Angelico’s. Of course the great painter of 
Madonnas is Raphael, with whose work we shall deal 
fully in another chapter. Raphael’s Madonna is the 
humanized Madonna—the peasant woman of the fields 
clasping her child in her arms, as we see in the Madonna 
of the Grand Duke and the Madonna of the Chair. In 
the Madonnas of Bellini, Crivelli, Mantegna, and 
Lorenzo di Credi there is something of the mystical 
aloofness. 

When we turn to consider the Madonnas of lands 
other than Italy we find is Belgium the mystical Maries 
of Memling; and in Holland and Germany the coarse 
‘“haus-fraus’ of Diirer and Rembrandt. When these 
Northern countries broke from the Catholic faith their 
painters ceased to find a subject of inspiration in the 
Mother of God; so that gradually the Northern Schools 
of Art ceased to paint her altogether. After the six- 
teenth century it was only in Italy and Spain that artists 
painted the Madonna with a spiritual signification. 

In modern painting this spiritual meaning is entirely 
absent. We look in vain in the work of Burne-Jones or 


THE BLESSED VIRGIN IN ART 35 


Rossetti for even a hint of spiritual import in the Maries 
they have painted. Burne-Jones’s might be designated 
neurotic and Rossetti’s as avowedly plain. Both these 
painters used the subject rather to exploit their art than 
to bring out its spiritual significance. 

The Madonna is the universal type of motherhood, 
but this representation of the Mother of God has found 
expression under various forms. The very earliest is the 
Portrait Madonna figure against an indefinite back- 
ground. This portrait style is of Byzantine or Greek 
origin and was introduced into the West after the con- 
quest of Italy by Justinian. This portrait style then 
remained unchanged till practically the thirteenth 
century. Then followed the Madonna Enthroned, in 
which the setting is some sort of a throne or dais. Then 
we have the Madonna in Glory, the Pastoral Madonna 
with a landscape background, and the Madonna in a 
Home Environment. We have, too, the Madonna of 
Love (Mater Amabilis), the Madonna in Adoration 
(Madre Pia), and the Madonna as Witness, in which the 
Mother is pre-eminently the Christ-Bearer. 

We may say here that the enthroned Madonna begins 
where the portrait Madonna ends. Yet, though the 
advent of the Renaissance marks the change from the 
portrait to the enthroned Madonna, painters such as 
Mantegna Luini and Alonzo Cano and Murillo, in 
Spain, painted at times the portrait Madonna. For the 
enthroned Madonna we have to reach the period of full 
art development. Such Florentine painters as Fra 
Bartolommeo and Andrea del Sarto and Francia of 
Bologna and the Venetians Cima and Bellini were 
partial to the enthroned Madonna. Raphael at times 
adopted the portrait style, as may be seen in his 


36 THE GENESIS OF CHRISTIAN ART 


Madonna of the Grand Duke. There is a beautiful 
enthroned Madonna by Perugino in the Vatican Gallery. 
Pinturicchio, who studied with Raphael in the bottega 
of Perugino at Perugia, has a beautiful Madonna in the 
Church of St. Andrew in Perugia. Raphael’s Madonna, 
the so-called Ansidei Madonna, is in the National 
Gallery, London. This was purchased by the English 
Government in 1885 for £72,000. In the Pitti Palace, 
Florence, there is a Madonna by Raphael called the 
Baldicchino, and one by Fra Bartolommeo which 
resemble each other very closely. The best known 
painter of Madonnas among the Venetians was unques- 
tionably Bellini, the Madonna which established his 
fame being the one that was originally painted for the 
Chapel in San Giobbe, now in the Venice Academy. A 
good example of the Madonna in Glory is the famous 
Madonna della Stella of Fra Angelico, which is in a 
beautiful Gothic tabernacle, the sole ornament of a cell 
in San Marco, Florence. Raphael has given us in all 
about twenty Madonnas, and among these are three, 
La Belle Jardiniere, in the Louvre; the Madonna in the 
Meadow, in the Imperial Gallery, Vienna; and the 
Madonna of the Goldfinch, in the Uffizi, Florence, which 
we may designate as Pastoral Madonnas or Nature idyls. 

The Dogma of the Immaculate Conception, pro- 
claimed in Council by Pope Pius IX in 1854, though 
generally accepted by the Christian world since the ~ 
earliest days of the Church, has been in later years a 
special subject of art inspiration to many painters such 
as Murillo and later Italian artists. The representation 
of the Blessed Virgin with a cluster of stars above her 
head and a crescent moon at her feet had origin in Spain. 

Let us set down here some of the chief paintings which 


THE BLESSED VIRGIN IN ART 37 


directly or incidentally deal with Our Blessed Lady: 
The Presentation of Our Lady by Carpaccio, in the 
Brera Gallery, Milan; Madonna and Child with St. 
Jerome and St. Dominic by Filippino Lippi, in the 
National Gallery, London; Immaculate Conception by 
Murillo, in the Prado, Madrid; Virgo Sapientiae by the 
Van Eycks, in the Church of St. Bavo, Ghent; Vision of 
St. Bernard by Filippino Lippi, in Florence; Enthroned 
Madonna by Cimabue, in the Church of Santa Maria 
Novella, Florence; Enthroned Madonna with Saints by 
Giovanni Bellini, in the Academy, Venice; Madonna 
and Child by Botticelli, in the Uffizi, Florence; Madonna 
and Child with St. John, by Raphael, in the Hermitage, 
Leningrad; Madonna and Child with St. Elizabeth and 
St. John by Andrea del Sarto, in the Louvre, Paris; 
Pieta by Francia, in the National Gallery, London; 
Eucharistic Ecce Homo by Giovanni Bellini, in the 
Ducal Palace, Venice; Our Lady as Intercessor, from 
Orcagna’s Last Judgment, in the Campo Santo, Pisa; 
The Nativity of Our Lady (fresco) by Ghirlandaio, in 
the Church of Santa Maria Novella, Florence; the 
Presentation in the Temple by Titian, in the Academy, 
Venice; Marriage of the Blessed Virgin, from a series of 
paintings by the ‘Master of the Life of the Blessed 
Virgin,” in the Old Pinakothek, Munich; The Annuncia- 
tion from the lunette by Luca della Robbia, in the 
Foundling Hospital, Florence; The Visitation by 
Albertinelli, in the Uffizi, Florence; Nativity of Christ 
by Botticelli, in the National Gallery, London; Adora- 
tion of the Shepherds by Correggio, in the Royal 
Gallery, Dresden; Adoration of the Magi by Memling, 
in the Hospital of St. John, Bruges; Presentation of 
Christ in the Temple (fresco) by Giotto, in the Church 


38 THE GENESIS OF CHRISTIAN ART 


of San Francesco Assisi; the Flight into Egypt by Fra 
Angelico, in the Academy, Florence; The Home at 
Nazareth (engraving) by Albert Durer; The Finding of 
Christ in the Temple (fresco) by Pinturicchio, in the 
Church of Santa Maria Maggiore Spello; The Marriage 
Feast at Cana by Paolo Veronese, in the Royal Gallery, 
Dresden; the Descent from the Cross by Uglino, Siena; 
the Entombment by Perugino, in the Pitti Palace, 
Florence; the Descent from the Cross by Tintoretto, in 
the Pitti Palace, Florence; The Ascension by Mantegna, 
in the Uffizi, Florence; The Death of Our Lady by 
Mantegna, in the Prado, Madrid; the Assumption by 
Titian, in the Academy, Venice; the Coronation of Our 
Lady (fresco) by Fra Angelico, in the Convent of St. 
Mark, Florence; and the Coronation of Our Lady 
(fresco) by Fra Lippo Lippi, in the Cathedral of Spoleto. 

Poet and Painter have, indeed, knelt in spirit and 
devotion before the Shrine of the Blessed Virgin, and 
have found inspiration in the beauty and divinity of her 
Motherhood. She is the supreme excellence of Human- 
ity, the highest point touched by the human race. Well 
does the English poet Wordsworth express this idea in 


his rarely beautiful sonnet ‘‘The Virgin’’: 
Mother! whose virgin bosom was uncrost 
With the least shade of thought to sin allied, 
Woman! above all women glorified, 
Our tainted nature’s solitary boast; 
Purer than foam on central ocean tost; 
Brighter than eastern skies at daybreak strewn 
With fancied roses, than the unblemished moon 
Before her wane begins on heaven’s blue coast; 
Thy Image falls to Earth. Yet some I ween 
Not unforgiven the suppliant knee might blend 
All-that was mixed and reconciled in Thee 
Of Mother’s love with maiden purity, 
Of high with low, celestial with terrene! 


CHAPTER IV 


THE SAINTS IN ART 


It is impossible to understand Christian Art without 
a knowledge of the hagiology of the Catholic Church; 
without some realization of, and appreciation for, the 
part which great saintly and illuminating souls have 
played, especially in symbol, from the very dawn of 
Christianity, in the expression and development of 
Christian Art. With a knowledge of the history of the 
Saints, religious painting takes on a new meaning; for 
the very mosaics in the early centuries, rude and crude 
and stiff as they seemed, were to the illiterate, as St. 
Augustine once said, ‘“‘sermons on the walls,” truths of 
Holy Church, to be conned and studied by the 
faithful. 

Now what are the attributes of the chief saints in 
Italian art? We shall begin with St. Francis of Assisi, 
for around the little brown-hooded Friar who walked 
the streets of Assisi, about seven hundred years ago, and 
preached poverty to the multitude and peace to warring 
cities, there has gathered more of the glory of art than 
around any other saint. Yet “‘the little man of God” 
who shepherded beast and bird inspired artists rather 
than made possible the creation of artists in his own 
community. This was reserved for that Order of 
intellectual action—the Dominicans—who gave to 
Christian art the two great Florentine painters, Fra 
Angelico and Fra Bartolommeo. 

39 


40 THE GENESIS OF CHRISTIAN ART 


Here, then, are the representations of the chief Saints 
in Italian art: St. Francis, the stigmata; St. Anthony of 
Padua, a lily, the Christ child; St. Dominic, the dog, a 
star above his head; St. Anthony, a bell; St. Lawrence, 
a gridiron; St. George, a dragon; St. Jerome, a lion; St. 
Peter Martyr, a wound in his hand; St. Bernard, a bee- 
hive, symbol of eloquence; St. Christopher, a child on 
his shoulder; St. Clement, an anchor; St. Stephen, 
stones on his head; St. Catherine of Alexandria, a wheel; 
St. Catherine of Siena, Dominican habit, stigmata; St. 
Barbara, a palm; St. Cecilia, an organ or musical 
instrument; St. Agnes, a lamb; St. Clara, the pyx with 
the host; St. Ursula, maidens; and St. Mary Magdalene, 
a skull. 

Now as to colours, they have had a particular signifi- 
cance in art. The colours were rich and beautiful in the 
mosaics and in the frescoes, excepting the flesh tints; 
gold was extensively used. Each colour had a mystic 
sense and its proper use was carefully studied. White 
represented purity, faith, joy, and light. It was worn 
by our Saviour after the Resurrection, by the Blessed 
Virgin, and by the women, as a symbol of charity. Red 
signified royalty, fire, Divine Love, the Holy Spirit, and, 
in an evil sense, war and hatred. Red and Black were 
the colours of Satan and evil spirits. Blue represented 
heavenly love, truth, and constancy. Christ and the 
Virgin wear a blue mantle and St. John a blue tunic. 
Green signifies hope and victory—the colour of spring. 
Yellow represented sin, goodness, marriage and fruit- 
fulness. St. Joseph and St. Peter wear yellow. Ina bad 
sense yellow signifies jealousy, deceit, inconstancy. 
This is the colour Judas wears in the Passion Play at 
Oberammergau. Violet represents passion, suffering, 


THE SAINTS IN ART 41 


love, truth, and penitence as Mary Magdalene wears it. 
After the Crucifixion it is the colour worn by the Blessed 
Virgin, and after the Resurrection, one of Christ’s 
colours. Gray represents penance, mourning, humility. 
It is the colour chosen by St. Francis of Assisi. Black 
alone signifies wickedness, death. In the pictures of the 
temptation Christ wears it. A word here as to the 

Messengers of God as represented in Art. St. Michael is 
represented as the Captain General of the hosts of 
heaven, his attribute being a sword and scales; St. 
Gabriel is the bearer of important messages, his attri- 
bute being a lily; and St. Raphael is represented as the 
Chief of the Guardian Angels, his attribute being the 
staff and gourd of a pilgrim. 

Let us now touch biographically upon some of the 
principal saints who have figured in Catholic art, 
indicating where possible the paintings or sculpture 
commemorative of them. 

St. Francis of Assisi (SEPTEMBER 17 AND OCTOBER 4). 
St. Francis, designated ‘“Everybody’s Saint,’ was born 
at Assisi 1182, the son of Pietro Bernadone. He was 
christened Giovanni, but his companions called him 
Francesco, because his father, who was a silk and wool 
merchant, had his son study French. As a youth 
Francis was gay and worldly. Resolving to fly from the 
world, while kneeling one day before a crucifix in the 
Church of St. Damiano, the youthful Francis heard a 
voice saying, ‘Francis, repair my Church.” Thence- 
forth he devoted himself solely to the service of God, 
wandering barefoot over the mountain wilds praising 
God for the earth his Mother and the moon his Sister, 
and had for his companions the flowers and the stars. 
In 1210 he obtained the sanction of Pope Innocent III 


42 THE GENESIS OF CHRISTIAN ART 


for the institution of an Order. Ten years later the 
number of friars in his Order had reached five thousand, 
of whom many were missionaries who went to foreign 
countries, St. Francis himself going to Egypt. On his 
return from Egypt he retired to a mountain hard by 
Assisi. Here he had his celebrated vision of Christ 
Crucified and received the stigmata or ‘‘Five Wounds.” 
He died in 1226 and was canonized two years later.— 
(St. Francis Preaching to the Birds—a fresco by Giotto 
in the Upper Church at Assisi). | 

St. Dominic (August 4). The founder of the Domini- 
can Order was born at Calaruga in Castile, Spain, 1170. 
After studying at Valencia he assumed the habit of a 
canon of St. Augustine and was distinguished for his 
learning and vigour of thought. In 1207 he went to 
Rome and received permission to preach against the 
Albigenses. St. Dominic associated with him other 
preachers who went with him in his missions and out of 
this association grew his Order. It was while St. 
Dominic was in Languedoc that he is said to have 
introduced the rosary, which had great influence in 
stirring up the devotion of the people. In 1218 St. 
Dominic went to Rome and instituted the Order of the 
Dominican Nuns. In the history of art the Dominicans 
have been especially distinguished. Besides, the work 
of Fra Angelico and Fra Bartolommeo there is the 
sculpture on the tomb of St. Dominic at Bologna, by 
Fra Gugliemo, and the frescoes in the Spanish Chapel of 
S. Maria Novella in Florence. 

St. Augustine (Aucust 28). The greatest of the 
Latin Fathers was born in 354 in Numidia, Africa. His 
mother was St. Monica. His early life as a youth was 
stormy. After a residence of some time at-Rome, where 


THE SAINTS IN ART 43 


he practised law successfully, he went to Milan, and 
coming under the influence of St. Ambrose, was bap- 
tized in presence of his mother. He was ordained in 387 
and later became Bishop of Hippo near Carthage. He 
died in Hippo during its siege by the Vandals in 430. 
St. Augustine was the founder of the Augustinian Order 
of Friars and became the Patron Saint of Theologians. 
St. Augustine figures very much in Art. Benozzo 
Gozzoli has illustrated his life in frescoes at San Gimig- 
nano near Siena, and there are pictures by Botticelli in 
the Academy Venice and by Garofalo in the National 
Gallery, London. 

St. Benedict (Marcu 21). The Founder of the 
Benedictine Order was born of a noble family in Spoleto 
480. He was sent to study at Rome, where he showed 
great promise. Attracted by the teaching of St. 
Jerome on the efficacy of solitude, he became a hermit 
at the age of fifteen. Having fled to the wilderness of 
Subiaco, where he tended the poor and the sick, a 
society of hermits made him their head. St. Benedict 
founded, in all, twelve monasteries and amongst his 
most distinguished converts to Christianity was St. 
Maurus, the son of a Roman Senator, who introduced 
the Benedictine Rule into France. From Subiaco St. 
Benedict went to Monte Cassino. There he promul- 
gated his Rule—perpetual vows of poverty, chastity, 
and obedience with manual labour. He died in 543. 
(Frescoes by Spinello Aretino in §. Miniato, Florence, 
and a painting by Memling in the Uffizi, Florence.) 

St. Thomas Aquinas (Marcu 7). Born at Rocca 
Secca, near Aquino, in Campania, 1227, his father being 
of the family of the Counts of Aquino, who were related 
to the illustrious Emperor, Frederick I. St. Thomas 


44 THE GENESIS OF CHRISTIAN ART 


Aquinas as a young man showed great promise in his 
studies, which he pursued at Monte Cassino and the 
University of Naples. At the age of seventeen he took 
the habit of St. Dominic against his family’s wish. St. 
Thomas Aquinas became the greatest writer and 
teacher of his age. He died in the Cistercian Abbey at 
Fossa Nuova, 1274, while on his way to the Council of 
Lyons. His companion in Dante’s Paradiso and some- 
times in art is his teacher in theology, Blessed Albertus 
Magnus. In his works he expressed the truths of 
revelation in the formulae of the Greek philosophy, 
thus bringing the wisdom and method of Aristotle into 
the service of the Church. He summed up all accessible 
knowledge and gave it form as an organic whole. St. 
Thomas Aquinas as a great intellectual figure is repre- 
sented allegorically in a fresco in the Spanish Chapel of 
Santa Maria Novella in Florence. (Painting, St. 
Thomas Aquinas among the Doctors of the Church, by 
Zurbaran, in the Museum, Seville.) 

St. John the Baptist (JUNE 24 anp AucusT 29). St. 
John the Baptist, who is the Patron Saint of Florence 
and of French Canada, figures very much in Christian 
art. Such well-known painters as Murillo, Andrea del 
Sarto, and Fra Lippo Lippi have represented St. John 
the Baptist in art. In pictures of the Holy Family he 
is generally represented as a child; sometimes, as in 
Murillo’s painting, he is represented as a boy with a 
lamb, and again as a young man in raiment of camel’s 
hair. His symbol, at all times, is the cross. (Frescoes 
by Fra Lippo Lippi in the Duomo of Prato, by Andrea 
del Sarto and Francia Bigio in the cloisters del Scalzo, 
Florence, by Piuturicchio in the Duomo Siena, and in 
the painting by Fra Lippo Lippi in the National Gallery, 


THE SAINTS IN ART 45 


London, where St. John the Baptist is represented as 
seated in the midst of St. Francis, St. Lawrence, SS. 
Cosmo and Damian, St. Anthony and St. Peter Martyr.) 

St. John the Evangelist (DECEMBER 27). Tradition 
says that St. John was sent to Rome in the reign of 
Domitian and cast into a cauldron of boiling oil, but 
was miraculously preserved. He was afterwards exiled 
to Patmos, where he wrote the Apocalypse, returning 
thence to Ephesus, where he died at the age of nearly 
a hundred years. He is said to have performed many 
miracles. When the Empress Galla Placidia was re- 
turning from Constantinople to Ravenna, she was 
overtaken by a violent storm and vowed to St. John if 
she was preserved she would build a magnificent church 
in his honour. This she did. (Frescoes by Giotto in 
Santa Croce, Florence, and painting by Sodoma, 
representing the Madonna and Child, St. Catherine, 
St. Jerome, St. Lucy, and St. John the Evangelist.) 

St. Cecilia (Patroness of Music). (NovEMBER 22). 
The patroness of music was the daughter of noble 
Roman parents. She used her great gift for music to 
glorify God. When she was about sixteen years of age 
her parents married her to a young Roman noble, 
Valerian, who was converted to the faith. He sought 
St. Urban in the catacombs and was baptized by him. 

St. Cecilia bequeathed all her goods to the poor and 
desired St. Urban to convert her house into a place of 
worship for the Christians. Her house became a Church, 
which was rebuilt over her remains in the ninth century, 
when she appeared to Pope Pascal I and told him where 
her body was buried. Later she became the Patron 
Saint of musicians. (Famous paintings by Raphael in 
the Academy, Milan, and by the Van Eycks in the 


46 THE GENESIS OF CHRISTIAN ART 


Berlin Museum. Painting by Moretto da Brescia in the 
Church of St. Clement, Brescia, in which are grouped 
St. Agatha, St. Lucy, St. Agnes, St. Barbara, and St. 
Cecilia. ) 

St. Peter (JANUARY 18 AND JUNE 29). The name of 
St. Peter is connected with many miracles. During the 
persecutions which followed the burning of Rome, 
tradition says that the Christians besought St. Peter 
to leave the city, and he at length consented. As he 
went along the Appian Way he met Christ walking 
towards Rome and said, ‘Domine quo vadis?” (Lord, 
whither goest Thou?). The reply was: ‘‘I go to Rome 
to be crucified anew.” St. Peter took this as a sign 
that he was to return and suffer all things—and at once 
obeyed. Together with St. Paul he was imprisoned in 
the Mamertine dungeon. According to legend, St. 
Peter’s daughter Petronilla accompanied him to Rome. 
St. Peter is regarded as the first Bishop of Rome. St. 
Peter is generally represented with keys as Door-Keeper 
of Heaven. Frescoes by Masaccio and others in the 
Carmine Church, Florence; by Raphael in the stanze of 
the Vatican; by Michelangelo in the Pauline Chapel; 
by Perugino in the Sistine Chapel, Rome. 

St. Catherine of Siena (Apriu 30). She was born in 
Siena 1347, and sought admission to the Third Order 
of St. Dominic while still continuing to live at her 
father’s house. She endured great temptations but 
overcame them by prayer and fasting. It is related that 
one morning when praying before the crucifix in the 
Chapel of St. Christine at Pisa, like St. Francis she 
received the ‘‘Stigmata.’’ Chosen by the Florentines 
who had been excommunicated in 1376 as the mediator 
with the Pope, then at Avignon, she helped to persuade 


THE SAINTS IN ART 47 


him to return to Rome. She died at the age of thirty- 
three. St. Catherine exercised great influence on the 
political history of her times. She also wrote books, 
which are among the Italian classics. Her last years 
were spent at Rome working for unity and the reforma- 
tion of the Church. (Portrait by Andrea di Vanni in San 
Domenico, Siena, and frescoes in her house and in the 
Academy, Siena. Painting by Sano di Pietro at Siena.) 

St. Ursula (Patroness of Girls and the Teacher of 
Girls) (OcTOBER 21). St. Ursula was a British Princess 
of Christian parents, beautiful, virtuous, and of won- 
drous learning. She was sought in marriage for Conon, 
son of the pagan King of England. She consented, but 
made a condition that he should become a Christian. 
Ursula and Conon proceeded to Rome, where Conon was 
baptized by the Pope. On their way back the pagans 
fell upon them and Ursula suffered martyrdom at 
Cologne. St. Ursula is usually represented accompanied 
by her maidens. Her life is illustrated by a series of 
paintings by Memling in the Hospital of St. John at 
Bruges and by Carpaccio in the Academy, Venice. 

St. Anthony of Padua (JuNE 13). St. Anthony was 
born in Portugal towards the close of the twelfth 
century, and having entered the Franciscan Order, 
devoted himself to missionary work. St. Anthony was 
sent by St. Francis of Assisi to teach divinity in several 
universities, including Padua. He became renowned as 
a preacher. Like St. Francis, St. Anthony, too, was a 
lover of nature and animals. In Padua, St. Anthony is 
much cherished as a saint, his church there being famous. 

Various artists have illustrated his life in reliefs and 
frescoes at Padua. He is revered as the restorer of lost 
property to the rightful owners. (Paintings of St. 


48 THE GENESIS OF CHRISTIAN ART 


Anthony by Murillo in the Provincial Museum, Seville). 

St. Mary Magdalene (Patroness of Marseilles and of 
Penitent Women) (Juny 22). There seems to be no 
distinction made in Western art between Mary the 
sister of Martha and Lazarus, Mary Magdalene, and 
“the woman which was a sinner,” though they appear to 
have been historically three distinct persons. According 
to legend, St. Mary and her brother and sister, accom- 
panied by SS. Maximin and Marcella, after the Ascen- 
sion set out in a boat without sails, oars, or rudder and 
came to Marseilles. Here they converted and taught 
St. Lazarus, who became the first Bishop of Marseilles. 
Many miracles are related of St. Mary Tradition says 
that Mary went into solitude in the wilderness and 
remained there thirty years, fasting and reading, and 
often visited by angels who bore her at last to Heaven. 
She is usually represented as very beautiful, with long 
fair hair. Her figure is symbolic of Christian penitence. 
(Fresco ‘‘Noli me Tangere”’ by Fra Angelico in San 
Marco, Florence; painting, ‘Jesus and Mary Magda- 
lene,” by Correggio, in the Prado, Madrid; painting by 
Titian in the Pitti Palace, Florence; and a series of 
frescoes by Ferrari in St. Christoforo Vercelli.) 

St. Teresa (OcTOBER 15). St. Teresa was born at 
Avila in Castile, 1515. At the age of twenty she entered 
the Carmelite Convent at Avila. She was a woman of 
most extraordinary character and great mental power 
with a most fervid temperament. When she had at- 
tained middle age she set herself to reform the Carmel- 
ites and before she died in 1582 she had founded 
seventeen new convents for women and fifteen for men 
all under her strict rule. 

Next to the ‘Confessions of St. -Augustine’”’ the 


THE SAINTS IN ART 49 


account of St. Teresa’s spiritual life as contained in the 
“Life Written by Herself’ and in the “‘Relations” and 
the ‘Interior Castle’ is one of the most remarkable 
spiritual biographies extant. Among writers on mystical 
theology St. Teresa also occupies a unique place. She is 
intensely personal and sets forth in the clearest light her 
marvelous spiritual experiences. St. Teresa was 
beatified in 1614 and canonized in 1622 by Pope 
Gregory XV. 

St. James the Greater (Juty 25). St. James is the 
Patron Saint of Spain, where he preached the gospel, 
returning thence to Judea. He was beheaded by order 
of Herod Agrippa and his body was carried to Joppa and 
put on board a ship which was directed by angels to 
Spain. His body was buried, but the place was un- 
known till a friar found it (800 a.p.) and removed it to 
Compostella. His shrine there became a place of pil- 
grimage where many miracles were wrought. In a 
battle with the Moors at Clavigo in 939 St. James was 
said to have appeared on a white charger at the head of 
the Christian host and Santiago was henceforth the war 
ery of the Spaniards. His life is represented in frescoes 
by Mantegna at the Eremitani Church, Padua, and by 
Sodoma in the Church of St. Spirito in Siena. 

St. Louis (of France) (Aucust 25). St. Louis of 
France is claimed by the Franciscans for he assumed the 
habit of the Third Order of Penitence before he em- 
barked on his first crusade. He was influenced by two 
great passions of his age—for crusade and for relics; and 
succeeded in bringing the Crown of Thorns to Paris, 
where he built over it Sainte Chapelle. He died in 1270 
and was canonized in 1297. (Frescoes by Giotto, in 
Santa Croce, Florence.) 


50 THE GENESIS OF CHRISTIAN ART 


St. George of Cappadocia (Patron Saint of England) 
(ApRIL 23). St. George was born of Christian parents 
in the reign of Diocletian in Cappadocia. He became a 
tribune in the army. The legend is that while travelling 
through Lybia he came to a place where a monstrous 
dragon living in a marsh ravaged the neighbourhood. 
People sacrificed sheep, even children, to appease it. At 
last lot fell on Cleodelinda and she was led out as a 
victim. St. George saw her as she passed. He made the 
sign of the Cross, attacked the dragon, and pierced it 
with his lance. St. George told the King that he had 
conquered through the might of God, whereupon the 
King and many thousands were converted and baptized. 
During the persecutions of Diocletian St. George 
suffered martyrdom. St. George has had particular 
veneration in England since the time of Richard I, 
whose armies were under his special protection. Fres- 
coes by Carpaccio in 8. Giorgio degli Schiavoni, Venice. 

The Sibyls. There were ten Sibyls named from the 
place of their birth or residence—Persian, Libyan, 
Delphic, Cumaean, Cytheraean, Samian, Cuman, 
Hellespontine, Phyrigian and Tiburtini. All of them 
are supposed to have prophesied of Christ and are 
introduced into Christian art and constantly associated 
with the prophets, apostles and evangelists. They are 
represented by the graffiti on the pavement of the 
Duomo, Siena; in frescoes in the Sistine Chapel, Rome, . 
by Michelangelo, and in St. Maria della Pace, Rome, by 
Raphael. 

The Nimbus. A word here as to the Nimbus. The 
glory, aureole and nimbus all represent symbols of 
sanctity. The aureole encircles the whole body, the 
nimbus the head, and the glory is the union of the other 


THE SAINTS IN ART 51 


two. The aureole, strictly speaking, belongs only to the 
Persons of the Trinity, but the Blessed Virgin is 
invested with it under certain circumstances, such as 
the Assumption. 

The nimbus belongs to all holy persons and saints. 
The cruciform or triangular nimbus belongs to the 
Persons of the Trinity. The nimbus of saints should be - 
circular. A square nimbus indicates that the persons 
represented are living. The hexagonal nimbus was used 
for allegorical persons. 


CHAPTER V 


THE DEVELOPMENT OF THE CHRISTIAN 
IDEAL IN ART 


When the Christian Church took art into its keeping 
and gave it direction in the day-dawn of its life, the 
Christian Ideal in Art had birth and beginning. Ever 
since, painting, sculpture, and architecture have been 
associated with the life of the Church. As an acolyte at 
its altars, Christian art has ever shared in its divine 
service, building up and beautifying the House of God 
with the radiant and celestial dreams of the soul. 

Until about three centuries ago, art remained solely 
the handmaid of religion, serving in its temples and 
ministering to the soul, with no thought of an earthly 
crown. During those sixteen hundred years it spoke to 
humanity in different tongues and with varied accent, 
but always understood of the people; for it spoke with 
the tongues of angels, ever standing before the throne of 
God; messengers of grace bearing tidings of faith and 
hope and redemption to mankind. Christian art is of 
heaven. 

The summit of ancient art, reached in the work of 
Phidias, Scopas, and Praxiteles, is marked by the perfec- 
tion of the finite; but the summit of Christian art 
reaches into the infinite. So the history of Christian art 
is marked by aspiration. It expresses, in symbol and 
allegory, the things of deepest concern to the life of the 

ee 


THE CHRISTIAN IDEAL IN ART 53 


soul. At first the expression was crude. It had to build 
its house, not in accordance with the promulgated wor- 
ship of Jupiter, or Saturn, or Minerva, but in accordance 
with the needs of the Spirit of God. 

In. ancient Rome adulation and voluptousness were 
the only springs of action. When Christian art, 
emerging from its hiding place, entered the lists with 
paganism, the motif in art was absolutely changed. 
There was a complete transformation. Now there are 
new hopes, new fears, new yearnings of the soul after 
righteousness. Thus the spiritual ideal developed in 
early Christian art as the Church set before the eyes of 
the faithful the divine truths of God, expressed in crude 
imagery, yet soulful aspiration, an aspiration linking the 
visible with the invisible, and the soul of man with its 
destiny of happiness hereafter. 

The Christian ideal in art found expression in part in 
the churches, which rose as witness to the mission of the 
Church in every land. Faith was symbolized especially 
in the glory of their interior. Though the exterior was 
sometimes plain and unadorned, the interior was 
marked by splendour. The mosaic known to both the 
Greeks and Romans was lavishly used with all its wealth 
of brilliant colour to adorn apse and nave and wall. 
Thus the Christian Church spoke to the faithful in the 
language of Christian art. 

Not always, however, did the Church mosaics repre- 
sent religious subjects. The early mosaics were often 
realistic. This is seen in the Church of St. Vitale in 
Ravenna, where the Emperor Justinian and the Empress 
Theodora and their suite are represented in a mosaic of 
extended dimensions. In truth, the early mosaics were 
for the most part historical, while those of a later date 


nae ey 


“~ 


54 THE GENESIS OF CHRISTIAN ART 


were liturgical and didactic. The Church used art as a 
means of grace. St. Gregory says: ‘‘What writing is for 
those who read, painting is for the uneducated who can 
only look.” It will be noted, too, that the early 
Councils of the Church declared themselves on the 
matter of art in the Church. In 787 the Second Council 
of Niczea proclaimed: 


The composition is not an invention of the 
painter, but a product of the legislation and tradi- 
tion of the Catholic Church. The art: alone 
belongs to the painter; the choice and arrangement 
are of the fathers who build the Church. 


But in the development of Christian art we must not 
forget to take note of the interregnum which ensued 
after Alaric and his barbarian hordes laid waste the 
Capital of Christendom. Indeed, it was not till the 
advent of Charlemagne, whose genius, as Rio says in 
his ‘‘Poetry of Christian Art,’ was a kind of equipoise 
held in reserve by Providence against all that remained 
of paganism in the West, that the Christian ideal in art 
had found soil and full freedom of development. As 
first-fruits secured to the Church by the great Emperor 
of the West, the erecting of several churches in Rome 
marked the pontificate of succeeding popes. But not 
alone in Rome, where the popes had fixed their see, 
but in cities of northern Italy—in Florence, Venice, 
Milan, and in the Capital City of the realm of Charle- 
magne, Aix-la-Chapelle, new and splendid ecclesiastical 
structures arose which marked the progress and 
development of the Christian ideal in art. 

When the storm of Iconoclasm swept the Eastern 
Kmpire—and it lasted for part of two centuries—the 


THE CHRISTIAN IDEAL IN ART 55 


Christian ideal in art suffered. Iconoclasm came as a 
spirit of destruction with the Mohammedans, from the 
deserts of the Orient. When it gained entrance into the 
Church of the Eastern Empire it wrought havoc with 
the splendour of imagery, in representation of Virgin 
and saint. It emptied the churches of the warmth and 
suggestiveness of Christian art, robbing thereby the 
very altars themselves of their attributes and atmos- 
phere of pious devotion. 

Following this blast of destruction a new Byzantine 
School arose, which, as we have already said, was 
liturgical and didactic rather than historical. It was 
at this time that the Byzantine style conquered the 
West. Almost coeval with the rise of the Crusades, 
Byzantine colonies appeared in Italy, notably at 
Venice, also in the south, and in Sicily. It was about 
this time that the Church of St. Mark’s at Venice was 
built; and in Sicily, under the conquering Norman 
princes, arose in 1148 the Cathedral of Cefalt, the 
palace Church at Palermo in 1160, and the Cathedral 
of Monreale in 1180. It was really a new art dynasty 
that arose in Sicily in which Damascus, Mount Athos, 
Rome, and Cluny seemed to make equal contributions 
“to a dream-story of architecture.’”’ With St. Mark’s 
in Venice, the building of which took about fifty years, 
from 1045 to 1095, Byzantine art in the West reached 
its richest flower and fruitage. 

We have noted in an earlier chapter that the Romano- 
Christian School of Art ceased almost altogether to 
exist from the date of the portent of the catastrophe 
which was to overwhelm the world in 1000. In the 
eleventh century a Benedictine School of Art arose at 


56 THE GENESIS OF CHRISTIAN ART 


Monte Cassino, whose influence extended as far as 
Cluny. Traces of this school are chiefly to be found 
in the miniatures of the time. North of the Alps, in 
Germany, the arts stood at a higher level during the 
eleventh and twelfth centuries, than in Italy. During 
those two centuries, also, France in social and intellec- 
tual development led all Europe. The Romanesque 
mural paintings in several churches and monasteries 
in Germany, especially in the fine Church of St. Michael 
at Hildesheim, are quite notable and betray little 
Byzantine or Italian influence. In truth, Romanesque 
wall-painting of the twelfth century, especially as 
represented in some Rhineland churches and cloisters, 
is very much better than anything of the same period 
south of the Alps. Except in the mosaic alone the 
craftsmanship of France and Germany during this 
period quite surpassed anything that native Italian 
workmen could produce. 

Nor must we forget to mention here the rise of 
decorative sculpture in France about this time. It was 
the heralding of Gothic, although some of the earliest 
of this decorative sculpture is to be found in Provence, 
in the South of France, in the storied portals of St. Gilles 
near Nimes and St. Trophimus at Arles. It will be 
noted that Provence took the lead in the literary 
revival of this time, and the artistic movement that 
followed was almost a logical result of the classical 
remains so abundant in ancient Provincia Romana. 

In Rome, where a school of painting might naturally 
have been founded following the work of Cavallini, the 
removal of the Papacy to Avignon in 1305 made this 
impossible. It has recently been shown and proved 
beyond question that there had been a revival of art 


THE CHRISTIAN IDEAL IN ART 57 


in Rome in the thirteenth century as attested to by the 
mosaics in Santa Maria in Trastevere and in Santa 
Maria Maggiore, the work respectively of Cavallini and 
Jacopo Torriti. 

It should not be forgotten that during the Roman- 
esque period of art development—that is, from the 
very inception of Christian art—architecture dominated 
all the other arts, the chief industry, almost the sole 
activity, being church building. Until the thirteenth 
century both architecture and painting were in the 
hands of priests and monks and all art was necessarily 
subordinated to the needs of religion and the welfare 
of the soul. Then took place a great art-stirring in the 
soul of Europe. It seemed as if an angel of creative 
force with a flaming torch had alighted upon the earth 
from the battlements of heaven. What had been 
liturgy and dogma under the mixed reign of Byzantine 
and Romanesque, now became humanized and vital, 
stirring to their depths the hearts of all races and all 
peoples, giving the artist new visions that culminated in 
an art epoch of splendour surpassing the richest 
achievements of world civilization. The development 
of the Christian ideal in art was fully attained when 
Divine Beauty, an attribute of God, possessed in dream 
the artist’s soul. 


CHAPTER VI 


BYZANTINE AND ROMANESQUE 


Byzantine, when used to designate a certain style or 
character of Christian architecture, is not so misleading 
as is the term Gothic. The term Byzantine is applied 
to the style of architecture which was developed in 
Byzantium after Constantine had transferred in 328 
A.D. the capital of the Roman Empire to that city. It 
reached its highest point of development under the 
Emperor Justinian between the years 527 and 565. 

Byzantine is a composite style of architecture into 
which entered Roman, Early Christian, and Syrian 
elements of structure. It was also affected in matters 
of decoration by the luxurious taste of the Orient. Its 
distinctive features are the use of brick and stone in 
place of concrete; the use of imposts in connexion with 
columns and arches; the character of the carved 
ornament applied to surfaces and a system of covering 
rectangular spaces with domes. The latter is what 
especially differentiates Byzantine from all other styles. 
In truth it may be said that what columnar is to Greek 
architecture, the domical is to Byzantine. 

As we have mentioned in a former chapter, Con- 
stantine became a great church builder, though none of 
the churches now extant in Constantinople dates from 
his time, the oldest existing church, in the city founded 
by the first Christian Emperor, dating only from the 
middle of the fifth century. When the Emperor Jus- 


58 


BYZANTINE AND ROMANESQUE 19 


tinian succeeded, with his General Belisarius, in driving 
the Goths out of Italy, and Ravenna became the seat 
of an exarch, there was erected in this “fortress of 
falling Empire’ by the Emperor of the East the 
beautiful Byzantine Church of St. Vitale, which was 
regarded as the Court Church of Justinian. In Ravenna 
also are to be seen the two churches dedicated to St. 
Apollinaris, St. Apollinare Nuovo, erected in 520, and 
St. Apollinare in Classe in 538. We might add here that 
Constantine built several churches in Syria; the Church 
of the Nativity in Bethlehem, the Church of the Ascension 
at Jerusalem, and another church at Antioch. All these 
are Byzantine and belong to the fourth century. 

It may be stated that Roman art originated as one 
branch of Byzantine art, which at the same time 
formed schools in Venice, in Rome, in southern Italy 
and in Sicily. In a study of the church architecture of 
Italy, as well as that of southern France, from the sixth 
to the eleventh century, it will be observed how large 
a part Byzantine played, though of course there was 
always a local infiltration that modified the style. In 
truth this is evident in all architecture, for there is no 
such thing as a pure style of architecture, Byzantine and 
Romanesque and Gothic being but a kind of blending 
and evolution of many elements that may be traced 
through the centuries back to the Greek. 

It may easily be realized how great was the influence 
of Rome, the seat of the Papacy, in determining during 
these many centuries the character of church archi- 
tecture in Western Europe. Beginning with what may 
be designated the Latin after the time of Constantine, 
the church architecture of Rome became Romanesque, 
with such a local infiltration that we might well call it 


60 THE GENESIS OF CHRISTIAN ART 


Papal. The three styles of architecture—Latin, 
Romanesque, and Gothic—may be regarded as the 
architectural expression of Latin Christianity. 

But the Byzantine art seed took root especially in 
certain centres and quarters of the West. We have 
spoken of its development at Ravenna first under the 
Roman Emperors of the West, then under Theodoric 
the Goth, and finally under Justinian. Ravenna is 
assuredly the one place to study the early Byzantine 
architecture and mosaic as they developed under the 
hands of Greek artists brought from the East. Next 
came Venice and the neighbouring towns of Torcello 
and Murano. St. Mark’s in Venice was modelled on 
the Church of the Holy Apostles at Constantinople, 
being completed about the close of the eleventh century. 
It is Byzantine in style, but has been much modified 
by additions made to it during succeeding centuries. 
St. Mark’s was erected by Byzantine builders in the 
form of a Greek Cross with the four parts of practically 
equal length grouped around a central square. Each 
of the five divisions is crowned by a dome. It is the 
interior, however, of St. Mark’s which attracts us. 
Perhaps in no other building in the world is there so 
marvellous an ensemble of coloured marbles, alabasters, 
and glass mosaics, or such subtleties, delicacies, and 
complexities of light and shadow. 

Then in Sicily there was another burgeoning of 
Byzantine architecture. The Saracens held Sicily from 
the ninth century till the Norman counts, Robert and 
Roger, won it for their own. Under these Norman 
freebooters a regular artistic dynasty as regards church 
building arose. Various elements entered into the 
blood of this art—Arabic, Greek, and Northern. Dur- 


BYZANTINE AND ROMANESQUE 61 


ing the twelfth century were built, as we have already 
noted, the Cathedral of Cefalt, the Palace Chapel at 
Palermo, and the Abbey of Monreale. | 

Indeed, Byzantine art influence found its way into 
well-nigh every corner of western Europe. In southern 
Italy it is found in Naples and Salerno, and in northern 
Italy in the Church of San Lorenzo in Milan. Again in 
southern France we have the Church of St. Front at 
Perigueux and the Cathedral at Angouleme, which show 
the influence of St. Mark’s at Venice. Let us say in 
connexion with Byzantine that it is one of the most 
interesting phases of art development. After it had 
fashioned and erected glorious Christian temples to God 
on the shores of the Bosphorus and enriched the Latin 
church of the West with beauteous altar and aisle and 
dome, it touched the soul of the desert-wandering Arab 
and found flower and fruitage in the splendid mosques 
of Cairo, Damascus, and Bagdad, and in that Moorish 
dream in Spain, the Mosque of Cordova, now a Chris- 
tian temple of faith and prayer. 

The term Romanesque, when applied to architecture, 
is a shifting and elusive one. Strictly speaking it 
means the architectural style of the Middle Ages, which 
prevailed from 1000 to 1200. The term is, however, 
very often applied to the whole period between the 
decline of Roman and rise of Gothic. It necessarily 
manifests very great variety according to locality, but 
it has a distinct character in that it embodies always 
certain Roman principles of construction modified more 
or less by early Christian and Byzantine methods. 

There are two constant features that belong to the 
Romanesque—the rounded arch and rib-vaulting. It 
should be stated here, however, that ribbed vaults were 


62 THE GENESIS OF CHRISTIAN ART 


known to the Arabs one hundred and fifty years before 
they appeared in Europe, as may be seen in a chapel 
in the mosque, now the Cathedral of Cordova. Again, 
it will be noted in connexion with Romanesque churches 
of the eleventh and twelfth centuries in France, Ger- 
many and England, that there is a bell tower which 
became a prominent element of design in the structure 
of the church, whereas in Italy the campanile, some- 
times round and sometimes square, was frequently 
detached from the main edifice. To understand how 
varied was the style of the Romanesque in Western 
Europe, we should remember that the age of the 
Romanesque was the age of feudalism, marked by 
social disorder. The only unifying power at this time 
was the Church. Feudalism, however, divided cities and 
peoples and so we can realize how a Romanesque church 
would have a certain local individuality of its own. 

In England there is little of architectural value be- 
queathed by the Anglo-Saxons, but with the advent of 
the Normans an impulse was given to church building. 
Usually the Romanesque in England is designated 
Norman or Anglo-Norman. Perhaps the finest church 
monument of this kind is the Cathedral of Durham, 
which was built at the close of the eleventh century. 
Then followed the Cathedral of Peterborough. Por- 
tions of Norwich Cathedral are also Norman. Ely has 
a Norman nave and Bristol a Norman chapter house. 
A good example of the small Norman church is that of 
Iffley, near Oxford. 

Romanesque may be classified into two divisions: 
Germany and north Italy, and France and England. 
Special mention must be made here of the palace 
church built at Aix-la-Chapelle at the close of the 


BYZANTINE AND ROMANESQUE 63 


eighth century and beginning of the ninth by Charle- 
magne. This of course was largely Byzantine in its 
design, being modelled on the Church of San Vitale in 
Ravenna. It is the vivid memory of Ravenna—the 
prototype of many churches in Germany and the most 
typical building of this epoch. In the German Empire, 
especially along the Rhine, there was a great revival of 
art from 975 to 1000 following the introduction of 
Byzantine artists by Otho II, who had married the 
daughter of the Emperor of Constantinople in 972. 
There is considerable resemblance between the Roman- 
esque churches of the Rhine in Germany and the 
Romanesque churches of northern Italy. This arose 
from the fact that the Rhine Provinces were closely 
allied by commerce with northern Italy. Some of the 
most typical examples of the Rhenish Romanesque are 
the Cathedrals at Worms, Treves and Mayence and the 
Church of the Apostles, at Cologne. 

It is alleged by some that Lombard-German Roman- 
esque influenced the Romanesque of France. But this 
is doubtful, for the Romanesque architecture of France 
is quite superior in architectural quality to anything 
produced at the same epoch in either Germany or Italy. 
It was really from French Romanesque that the great 
complete style of mediaeval Gothic was naturally 
developed. Perhaps the finest Romanesque church in 
France is St. Sernin of Toulouse. This was built towards 
the close of the eleventh century. It could not, however, 
have been the model for the Church of St. James of 
Compostella in Spain, as Street says, seeing that both 
were built within the same years. Another magnificent 
church of the Romanesque type in southern France is 
the Cathedral of Albi. In the old city of Carcassone is 


64 THE GENESIS OF CHRISTIAN ART 


the Church of St. Nazaire, made up of two distinct 
parts, one Romanesque and the other Gothic. It may 
be said that while the cathedrals of southern France are 
not equal to those of the north, there are some which for 
magnificence and impressiveness take rank with the 
most notable of any land. 

In Italy the unifying influence of the Church, to which 
we have already referred, was counterbalanced by the 
provincialism and the local diversities of the various 
Italian states, resulting in a wide diversity of architec- 
tural styles. These may be grouped under four divi- 
sions: The Lombard, the Tuscan-Romanesque, the 
Italo-Byzantine and the Basilican or Early Christian. 
The Lombard style is found in Milan, Bologna, Pavia, 
and Verona. The finest type of the Tuscan-Romanesque 
is the Cathedral at Pisa, while the Church of St. Miniato 
in Florence may be regarded as Italo-Byzantine. 

In Spain, when Toledo was captured from the Moors 
in 1062 and the emancipation of the country from 
Moslem rule had truly begun, there followed something 
of a church building era in northern Spain. These 
churches were largely Romanesque, perhaps in some 
instances influenced by French Romanesque models. 
Such churches as the old Cathedral in Salamanca, the 
Collegiate Church at Toro, the Church of St. Isidore at 
Leon, and the Church of St. Vincent at Avila, resemble 
very much contemporary French work. Yet it is wrong > 
to say that Spain was a mere copyist. It is worth noting 
that these churches in their style reveal little of Moorish 
influence. Let us say here that we should always be on 
our guard against attributing to peoples and races the 
borrowing of their art ideals from others, for ideals 
everywhere are a common property. 


CHAPTER VII 


THE FULL AWAKENING OF CHRISTIAN ART 


We have now reached the threshold of a marvellous 
epoch in the political, social, intellectual, and spiritual 
development of Europe. Steadily the great work of the 
Church as a civilizing, redeeming, and Christianizing 
force has been bearing fruit. The faith that had ex- 
pressed in the catacombs the higher and holier dreams of 
the soul, in rude image and symbol, now becomes 
vitalized with a new force, and is seeking expression, 
through the manifold activities of the spirit, in battling 
for Christ in crusade before the walls of Jerusalem; in 
the building of church and cloister; in the lonely vigils of 
the knight who, kneeling at the shrine of the Mother of 
God, vows in prayer protection to woman. 

And yet we are still in the Middle Ages, but a Middle 
Ages aflame with the ardour of faith. Civilization is 
now beginning to feel the embrace of peace. The sword, 
indeed, has not been put in its scabbard, but war is 
beginning to develop, even amid its horrors, sentiments 
of pity and forgiveness and charity and brotherly-love. 
Rome has now extended her spiritual sway over well- 
nigh all Europe. The successor of St. Peter becomes, by 
the consent of mankind, the arbitrator of nations. What 
greater tribute could have been paid to the popes of the 
Middle Ages than that they should have been made 
depositaries of such power. 


66 THE GENESIS OF CHRISTIAN ART 


It is full time now to look, after all this planting of the 
seeds in the fields of Christian hope and prayer and 
sacrifice, for the burgeoning of a Christian art and 
literature. We are already on the eve of its blossoming. 
The past centuries have prepared the way. The East 
has lent something to the West. The Church has pre- 
served the artistic fruits of faith. Christian architecture 
symbolizes each gift of the nations. After battling 
against every adverse force, the Church emerges from 
all those troublous centuries in the West in triumph, 
wearing a tiara of splendour. Faith has preserved the 
best in art in both the East and the West. 

To this full awakening of Christian art which marks 
especially the twelfth and thirteenth centuries of 
European civilization, very many factors and events 
contributed. But let us not forget that the development 
of art and literature does not in itself depend upon 
adventitious circumstances. So we doubt the wisdom of 
endeavouring to explain all the causes and factors that 
entered into the birth and development of this mar- 
vellous period upon whose threshold we now stand: a 
period which perhaps has no parallel in the history of the 
world. It is something more than the East touching the 
West; antiquity lighting new altar-fires in the Italian 
Republics; something more than the accidental finding 
of a Graeco-Roman sarcophagus; something more than 
the advent into Italy of Byzantine artists. | 

Art and literature do not develop from adventitious 
causes, but come forth from the spiritual constitution of 
the times. In art, as in life and government, “The old 
order changeth giving place to the new, lest one good 
custom should corrupt the world.’ The advent of St. 
Thomas Aquinas, Dante, and Giotto was not accidental. 


FULL AWAKENING OF CHRISTIAN ART 67 


They are the fruit of spiritual evolution. Ten silent 
centuries of Christian faith are reflected in their works. 
Yet we would do well in our study of art to note closely 
the character of the political, social, and religious move- 
ments that mark the epoch of art creation, as these con- 
stitute factors both in the impulse given to creative 
energy and in determining to some extent what form 
creative art shall take—what shall be its mould, its like- 
ness, and the spirit of its message to the people. 

We have now touched the centuries of romance and 
chivalry, and Romance Art, with which we will have to 
deal, is but one of many expressions of the life of the 
Middle Ages. This romance art had birth in the age of 
the Crusades, the time of “a culture not founded on 
knowing things, but on the art of doing things.” It is 
also an age of allegory, as the pages of Dante’s Divine 
Comedy and the stained glass windows of Gothic 
Cathedrals bear witness. There is, too, a very quest of 
the Holy Grail abroad. The burning and eloquent words 
of Pope Urban to the great Christian assemblage at 
Clermont-Ferrand on the eve of the setting out of the 
First Crusade in 1095 has stirred the soul of Europe. 
The battle ery, “It is the will of God!” goes up to 
heaven, and armed Europe throws itself upon infidel 
Asia. It is a movement unparalleled in history. King, 
prince, knight and peasant bear upon their shoulder the 
red cross. Eight crusades follow, in the last of which a 
King of France, Louis IX (St. Louis), leads his army 
and dies at its head in 1270 in Tunis, Africa. Coeval 
with the Crusades a movement of much greater and 
more spiritual significance had birth—the foundation 
and organization of the Mendicant Friars. St. Francis 
of Assisi, ‘“Erverybody’s Saint,” heard the voice of God 


68 THE GENESIS OF CHRISTIAN ART 


calling upon him to repair His house. St. Dominic, with 
the great zeal of active faith, marched out with the cross 
and put down heresy. Two great saints of contempla- 
tion and action, they touched and fortified the spiritual 
life of their time with the rare gifts and virtues of prayer 
and poverty and the divine sacrifice of truly militant 
souls. The little brown-hooded ‘‘Poverello’”’ of Assisi 
by the might of his teaching converted war and selfish- 
ness into peace and humility as he traversed the high- 
ways with sandalled foot, with ‘‘the courtesy of God”’ 
for his creed, his divine gaiety mocking the very drama 
of his poverty. 

Assuredly these significant movements of chivalry 
and faith touched deeply the art of the time. In truth 
St. Francis has been called the father of Italian art, and 
the saying is true if taken with a certain elasticity of 
meaning. Nor should we forget to mention here the 
wonderful influence that the cult of the Blessed Virgin 
had upon the art of this period. The Virgin of the 
Middle Ages, the Throne of God and Queen of Heaven, 
gives place to the Mother, the most beautiful, the 
sweetest and tenderest of women. After St. Bernard, 
il suo fedele Bernardo, St. Francis of Assisi, and St. 
Bonaventure, devotion to the Madonna became one of 
the chief Christian devotions. This, too, is the age of 
the Rosary, instituted by St. Dominic as he crushed out 
by preaching and prayer the dangerous teaching of the - 
Albigenses. 

Another contributing factor to the full awakening and 
development of Christian art, especially architecture, in 
the towns of northern France, when these towns became 
communes, was the guilds, which became regular schools 
of craftsmanship. A mediaeval town was a sort of craft 


FULL AWAKENING OF CHRISTIAN ART 69 


university and Gothic art is the art of the Masons’ guild. 
Indeed, whoever would follow step by step the develop- 
ment of art at this period must recognize the prepon- 
derating art-influence of France upon the neighbouring 
countries. Nor is there any need to confine this influ- 
ence to the Ile de France alone, for the new spirit had 
already touched Normandy and Burgundy and the 
Cistercian monks had now borne the seeds of the new art 
spirit between the leaves of their breviaries into both 
England and Spain. 

Again this was the age when France led all Europe in 
political, social, and intellectual development. The 
twelfth century in creative energy was for France what 
the thirteenth was for Italy. It was one of the most 
splendid periods in the intellectual life of man, express- 
ing itself in an infinite variety of noble and attractive 
forms. 

At this epoch, then, in the history of art we stand as 
watchers of the dawn and behold night passing away. 
The light of faith, dimmed at times in the past but ever 
shining amid tempest and turmoil, proves a lamp to our 
feet. At last there is ushered in the full tide of morn. 
The spiritual life of centuries has finally found in art a 
fitting voice and tongue. It is, indeed, the full awaken- 
ing of Christian art. 


CHAPTER VIII 
THE EVOLUTION OF THE GOTHIC 


Of all the arts which spring from the soil of Catholic 
faith, the most sublime and vital is that of Gothic 
architecture. ‘‘Since the days of Greece,” says Ralph 
Adams Cram, ‘‘whose victorious authority and tranquil 
beauty subdue us even yet, nothing has been seen 
equal to Gothic art, and perhaps humanity will never 
again see so powerful a manifestation of artistic vital- 
ity.”” Carlyle tells us that ten silent centuries speak 
through the lips of Dante. With equal truth we may 
say that ten silent centuries of Catholic faith whisper 
to our souls as we tread the aisles of a mediaeval Gothic 
cathedral. | 

The Gothic cathedral is the “Summa”’ of St. Thomas 
Aquinas plus the ‘Divina Commedia”’ of Dante wrought 
in stone. It is the concrete expression of a Christian 
soul yearning for the infinite. It is both mystic and 
scholastic. The spirit of contemplation abides in its 
aisles, and the beatific vision of God upon its altar. 
The same spirit that touched with fire from heaven the © 
lips of St. Thomas Aquinas and anointed the eyes of 
Dante, gave creative form to the Gothic cathedral and 
reared tower above wall and turret above tower, with 
cross melting away into immortal light. 

Ralph Adams Cram tells us that Gothic architecture 
and Gothic art are the aesthetic expression of that epoch 

70 


THE EVOLUTION OF THE GOTHIC 71 


of European history when paganism had been ex- 
tinguished, the hordes of barbarian invaders beaten 
back or christianized and assimilated, and when the 
Catholic Church had established itself not only as the 
sole spiritual power supreme and almost unquestioned 
in authority, but also as the arbiter of the destinies of 
sovereigns and of people. Of course the transition of 
Gothic architecture was from the Romanesque, and 
this transition took place in France. Almost. all 
historians of art are agreed upon this. Yet they are not 
agreed as to what England, Germany, Italy, and Spain 
owe to the inspiration of French Gothic art. 

The term Gothic is a misnomer. As Vasari, the 
Italian painter and historian of art, tells us, the term was 
first ‘used during the later Renaissance and in a spirit of 
contempt. Ignorant both of the habitat of the style and 
its nature the Italians called the Gothic the maniéra 
tedesca. It is difficult to understand what led them to do 
this, for there is nothing either racial or religious, geo- 
graphical or chronological, that might connect it with a 
race and name that had perished and disappeared with 
Justinian’s conquest of Italy and Sicily about the middle 
of the sixth century. As Ralph Adams Cram points out, 
Gothic art, ethnically considered, is Franco-Norman in 
its origin and certainly there is no kinship between the 
Catholic Franks and Normans on the one hand and the 
Arian Goths on the other. 

It should be noted here that Italians have never taken 
kindly to the Gothic. They look upon the Gothic 
cathedral as they do upon a musical drama of Wagner, 
as lacking in harmony. So we must be ever on our 
guard when we read Italian criticism of Gothic art. 
Italian genius can reach the sublime, as it has in Michel- 


72 THE GENESIS OF CHRISTIAN ART 


angelo and Dante, but all must be subject to law and 
order and predominant grace. This attitude of the 
Italian mind towards Gothic is set forth in the following 
opinion advanced in their ‘History of Art’ by Natali 
and Vitelli: 


The harmony of northern Gothic architecture is 
as indefinite as a melody of Wagner; add a spire to 
the Cathedral of Cologne and it will remain what it 
is; take but a single line from the facade of the 
Cathedral of Orvieto and immediately the charm 
is broken. 


For a long time Gothic architecture was regarded by 
many as having had its origin in Germany. It was held 
that its prototype was the German forest compressed in 
miniature. It was indeed an ingenious and somewhat 
apt explanation; for as you enter a Gothic cathedral you 
feel that it reflects something of the mysterious life of 
the forest in that it reproduces that life by artistic com- 
pression so that the rock, the tree—nature, in fine—is 
there in artistic representation. 7 

Should you ask where was the cradle of Gothic, we 
would answer without a doubt, in Normandy. From 
the very days of St. Benedict in the sixth century, the 
Catholic Church had been preparing the soil for the 
flowering of Gothic art. The civilization of the Middle 
Ages was Catholic civilization, whose consecrating force . 
was religion. The centuries following Pope Gregory the 
Great and St. Benedict saw Europe redeemed and the 
Church purified and restored by Pope Gregory VII and 
the monks of Cluny. This was followed in the twelfth 
century by the development of great schools, the rise of 
communes, the military orders and the crusades. Then 


THE EVOLUTION OF THE GOTHIC 73 


followed the thirteenth century, which ‘‘with the aid of 
Pope Innocent III, Philip Augustus, St. Louis, and the 
Franciscans and Dominicans, was to raise to the highest 
point of achievement the spiritual and material poten- 
tialities developed in the immediate past.” 

Towards the close of the eleventh century—that is, 
after the death of William the Conqueror—the duchy of 
Normandy lost much of its influence. Henceforth 
Gothic art found its chief stimulus, patronage and 
inspiration in the [le de France as a part of the realm of 
the French monarchy. It may be also added that when 
the Cluniac influence waned in Normandy it received a 
new and greater impulse from the Cistercian monks, 
who especially promulgated and favoured Gothic art in 
their buildings in England. 

During the eleventh century and the first half of the 
twelfth century nearly all the architects whose names 
have come down to us belong to the religious orders. 
During the second half of the twelfth century the 
superiority appeared to be in favour of the laity, and 
under Philip Augustus this superiority became prepon- 
derant. At the close of the thirteenth century all the 
architects known belong to the civil professions. 

What the French call la grande poussée de séve de 
Varchitecture Gothique, which we may translate as ‘‘the 
vigorous impulse given to Gothic architecture,” took 
place in France during the reigns of Louis VI, Louis VII, 
Philip Augustus and Louis IX, a period comprising a 
century and a half, during which the genius of France 
shed its rays over Christendom and the foundation of 
French national unity was practically laid. This was 
brought about by the alliance between royalty, the 
Church, and the free commune, 


74 THE GENESIS OF CHRISTIAN ART 


It was, moreover, within this unique and marvellous © 
epoch that the great Gothic cathedrals of France were 
built: Notre Dame de Chartres, Notre Dame de Paris, 
the Cathedrals of Bourges, Rheims, Amiens, Rouen, 
Laon, Soissons, Sens, and Beauvais. Historians of art 
have designated Gothic as the “‘Catholic Style.” We 
may add to this, remembering where the art had birth 
and where it flowered so richly, that it might well be 
designated also the ‘‘French Style.” 

These hundred and fifty years of Gothic development 
were illustrious in their fruitage and in the life of France. | 
The splendour of Paris University attracted the most 
eminent minds of the Catholic world. The French 
“Chansons de Geste”’ are everywhere translated and 
imitated. The superb ‘Chanson de Roland,” which 
rivals in strength and grandeur the Homeric poems, 
makes, as a writer says, the tour of Europe in the 
wallet of the trowvéres. Paris for the first time becomes 
truly the altar and centre of European scholarship, 
culture, and civilization. The greatest men of the time 
enrol in its university. Dante and Roger Bacon and 
Raymond Lully and Brunetto Latini and Thomas 
Aquinas and Bonaventure sit on its benches. Gothic 
architecture, which the Germans of the thirteenth 
century designated opus franci genum, is meantime 
copied everywhere, and the best architects of France go 
away to propagate the new law. It crosses the English - 
Channel, the Rhine, the Pyrenees, the Mediterranean. 
We see William of Sens building the choir of Canterbury 
Cathedral, and an architect from Blois at work on the 
choir of Lincoln Cathedral, Etienne de Bonneuil build- 
ing the Cathedral of Upsala, and Matthias of Arras 
building the Cathedral of Prague. 


THE EVOLUTION OF THE GOTHIC 75 


We think it is generally accepted that William of Sens 
introduced into England and set before English eyes as 
much of the Gothic as then existed, at least at Sens; but 
it has been disputed that the work of William of Sens in 
rebuilding the Canterbury choir was the first Gothic 
done in England. Mr. Bond, in his work ‘Gothic 
Architecture in England,” holds that the first complete 
Gothic of England commenced, not with the choir of 
~ Lincoln or Canterbury, but with the Cathedral of Wells. 
which was begun by Reginald Fitzbohun, who was 
bishop from 1174 to 1191. 

In the development of Gothic architecture in England 
two things are quite evident: first, that England re- 
ceived the Gothic idea from Normandy, borrowing 
directly from Normandy and France; secondly, that she 
assimilated what she acquired and gave toall a distinctly 
national character that tended more and more, as the 
English Gothic style developed, to separate it structur- 
ally from the Gothic of France. Edward 8. Prior in his 
“History of Gothic Art in England” endeavours to 
lessen the indebtedness of England to France in her 
Gothic inspiration and borrowings. His arguments are 
specious and not at all convincing. He alleges, which is 
true, that all early Gothic building was church building, 
adding that French Gothic was laic, whereas English 
Gothic was cleric, and that the one borrowed little from 
the other. Assuredly little importance should be 
attached to such a statement as this. 

Of course it must be confessed that England, step by 
step diverging steadily from her point of departure from 
the Gothic of France, had worked out to the full her own 
form of artistic expression. It is, too, clearly seen that 
French precedents sat lightly upon England. Yet it 


76 THE GENESIS OF CHRISTIAN ART 


would be folly to deny England’s indebtedness to France 
for the introduction of Gothic in its early development. 
Let us not forget that architecturally speaking the 
twelfth and thirteenth centuries were for France 
centuries of great splendour. Indeed England owes to 
France both her early Romanesque and Gothic develop- 
ment. Why, Henry III, during whose reign West- 
minster Abbey was built, might be regarded socially as 
a Frenchman, seeing that in his early days he was 
continually at the court of Louis IX and his royal 
monastery was fashioned on the French system. Its 
monks spoke French. In truth, just as Cologne is a 
French Cathedral on German soil, so Westminster 
Abbey is a French Cathedral on English soil. 

When we turn to Germany we find that the Gothic, as 
in Italy, was slow in taking root there. It may be said 
that Cologne was the first Gothic church built in 
Germany. Cathedrals such as the one at Speyer are 
really more Romanesque than Gothic. In the Mayence 
Cathedral, for instance, there is very little of the 
Gothic. Strasburg Cathedral, however, may be re- 
garded as Gothic. 

As regards Cologne Cathedral, it is most perfect and 
complete on the structural side. It was French archi- 
tects who designed it and it is modelled on the Cathe- 
drals of Amiens and Beauvais. The Cathedral of 
Cologne is really a late construction, the greater part of 
it dating from the fourteenth and subsequent centuries. 
But noble and impressive as is this massive structure 
on the Rhine, it lacks the warmth, the suggestiveness 
and the spiritual appeal found in the great Gothic 
eathedrals of France. 

Flemish Gothic is a sub-school of French Gothic. By 


THE EVOLUTION OF THE GOTHIC 77 


far the finest Gothic church in Belgium is the Cathedral 
of Antwerp. Its spire is a veritable crown; soaring as it 
does in the air, it is glorious to behold. ‘Tournai Cathe- 
dral, with its five towers, is indeed quite unique, but 
Tournai Cathedral is not pure Gothic. In fact, the nave 
of Tournai, wh:ch was built in 1060, is Rhenish Roman- 
esque. 

As to the Gothic in Italy, it practically always 
remained an exotic. Not only that, but even southern 
France, as well, never advanced far beyond the Roman- 
esque; and in Brittany, while there are several import- 
ant Gothic churches, such as the Cathedral at Quimper, 
they are as a whole almost all too heavy. In Italy the 
introduction of Gothic was as long delayed as in 
Germany, and as far as native work is concerned, as 
Cram points out, the fundamental principles of Gothic 
construction were never accepted at all. Milan 
Cathedral, it is true, is a very noble structure, but it is 
only a travesty of Gothic. 

One of the first churches in Italy which showed a 
complete acceptance of the Gothic style was the 
Basilica of St. Francis of Assisi, the foundation stone 
of which was laid in 1228. Grant Allen holds that the 
Cathedral at Siena, the Cathedral at Orvieto, and the 
campanile of Santa Maria del Fiore in Florence are the 
three finest examples of Italian Gothic. But of course 
none of these is pure Gothic. 

When we turn to Spain we find that as a Christian 
state it had practically, outside of a small territory near 
the Pyrenees, no existence till the middle of the thir- 
teenth century, when Ferdinand III united the crowns 
of Castile and Leon and won back from the Moors 
Seville and Cordova. A few churches in Spain before 


78 THE GENESIS OF CHRISTIAN ART 


this time show an undeveloped type of Gothic, but it 
was not until the victories of Ferdinand III made 
Spanish nationality possible and the coming into Spain 
of the Cistercian monks gave the necessary spiritual 
impulse, that Gothic architecture in any true sense 
appeared in Spain. The Cathedrals of Burgos, Barce- 
lona, Toledo, and Leon show clearly the influence of 
French Gothic, though of course they widely differ in 
detail from French precedents. Perhaps of all Spanish — 
Gothic cathedrals that of Burgos gives most evidence of 
French Gothic influence. Burgos, too, is usually 
regarded as the finest Gothic cathedral in Spain. It 
may be added that in the Spanish Gothic cathedral there 
is a certain personality that gives it distinctiveness from 
that of any other school of Gothic. — ) 

As to which are the finest Gothic churches in Europe, 
the choice must largely depend on temperament and 
taste. In England Lincoln is usually regarded as the 
finest and most complete. In Germany Cologne easily 
stands alone. Structurally considered, this is one of the 
finest Gothic cathedrals in the world, but the absence of 
sculpture renders it cold and hard. 

In France there are so many magnificent cathedrals 
that it is difficult to make a choice. Each church has 
some special architectural feature to commend it. The 
French themselves sum this up by saying: 


Clocher de Chartres, Nef d’ Amiens, 
Choeur de Beauvais et Portale de Reims. 


[Tower of Chartres, Nave of Amiens, 
Choir of Beauvais and Portal of Rheims.] 


It may be said here that French Gothic reached its 
full maturity and the summit of its perfection in the 


THE EVOLUTION OF THE GOTHIC 79 


Sainte Chapelle, which was built in Paris during the 
reign of Louis IX. This miracle of the Gothic, which 
was built by Master Pierre de Montereau, has an upper 
and lower chapel, both possessing magnificent windows. 

But not in architecture alone did the Gothic feeling of 
this age reveal itself artistically. It found expression, 
too, in the dream in marble, and touched and glorified 
the painter’s brush. Indeed, it will be often found that 
sculpture and architecture go hand in hand. In France 
in the thirteenth century the imagiers or stone sculptors 
worked hand and hand with the great cathedral builders. 
This century may certainly be called the golden age of 
Gothic sculpture. Witness for example the loveliness of 
the angel statues around the Sainte Chapelle and the 
noble and majestic statues of Christ and the Apostles at 
the west end of Amiens Cathedral. Well may a writer 
say that these statues in perfection of execution and life 
expression have nothing to envy in antiquity. 

At the same epoch appear in Italy Niccola, Pisano 
and Cimabue and Duccio and Giotto. At their advent 
the Angel of Beauty and Truth awakes from its long 
slumber and forthwith art is touched as if in miracle 
with all the radiance of a consecrated dream. It is the 
-day-dawn of a new cycle in art which is to end in an 
evolution of Gothic splendour. 


CHAPTER Ix 


THE CATHOLIC CHURCH AND THE ITALIAN 
RENAISSANCE 


At this stage in our discussion of the development of 
Christian art, it is well that we should devote some time 
to a consideration of the attitude of the Church towards 
that new movement known as Humanism which revealed 
and expressed itself in terms of art and literature in the 
life and civilization of Italy. The Italian Renaissance is 
perhaps the most complex period in the history of the 
world, and to understand it aright one has need, above 
all, of a contemporary sense of history. 

We have seen how the Church in past centuries had 
fostered both Christian art and literature; how under its 
aegis the highest inspiration of the soul had been 
nourished; how Christian tradition had handed down 
the memory of a culture based upon faith and its 
practices; how art had been conserved in church and 
cloister as a handmaid of religion; and how zealously the 
Church of God had watched over the new-born art and 
literature committed in trust to its care and keeping. » 

We have now to consider the relation of the Church to 
this new awakening of the human mind; to this stirring 
of the spirit; to this unsealing of the eye to the revealed 
beauty in nature and antiquity. There are two phases 
of the Italian Renaissance to be considered, and these 
must not be confused: the Revival of Learning and the 

80 


CATHOLIC CHURCH AND RENAISSANCE 81 


Development of Art. We have to do here particularly 
with the latter, as it touches and concerns the genesis of 
Christian art. 

But let us not forget that this great movement, the 
Itahan Renaissance, began much earlier than historians 
generally allege. It is said that Dante, who was born in 
1265, faced both ways—towards the departing Middle 
Ages and the dawn of the great Renaissance period. We 
had better accept this opinion and regard the three 
hundred years following the birth of Dante as the 
veritab!e period of the Italian Renaissance in art and 
literature. 

These were a remarkable three centuries in the life of 
Italy, when her republics taught Europe the wisdom of 
state-craft, the laws of trade and commerce, the worth of 
individual genius, and the glory and perfection of the 
fine arts. It was a period, when, despite the dark 
tragedies of vice, piety and prayer still illumined the 
cloisters of Italy and this, too, at a time when the new 
wine of old classicism poured from Homeric flasks, and 
casks had wellnigh intoxicated the head and heart of 
this garden of Europe and turned possible saints into 
satyrs. To Greek art and literature is generally attrib- 
uted much of the credit for the impulse given to this 
Renaissance movement in art and literature in Italy in 
the thirteenth, fourteenth, and fifteenth centuries; and 
in connexion with this is also emphasized the arrival of 
Greek scholars in Italy after the fall of Constantinople 
in 14538. But the true cause of the Italian Renaissance 
lay much deeper than all this. It had been growing 
through the preceding centuries and gathering force. 
Nor can any historian very well put his finger on any 
one fact, factor, or event and say: ‘‘This was the real 


82 THE GENESIS OF CHRISTIAN ART 


cause of the Italian Renaissance.”” The world of 
thought and free inquiry had extended its boundaries. 
This came with the broadening process of the mind. 
This spirit of free inquiry existed not despite Scholasti- 
cism, but largely because of it. Indeed it existed before 
Scholasticism had found full concrete form in the 
Summa of St. Thomas Aquinas. The Church never 
formally condemned free inquiry either in the world of 
philosophy or science. What the Church did was to 
condemn what she, as the deposit of divine truth, 
regarded as false in the world of moral teaching. In 
fulfilling her divine commission the Church does the 
very same thing today. 

It should not be forgotten here that the right of free 
inquiry and the right to uphold what is morally false are 
two distinct things. The Church, too, permits the very 
fullest criticism. What critic could be more scathing in 
his denunciation of Papal abuses, or what he regarded as 
abuses, than the poet Dante? Yet his sublime trilogy, 
the “Divine Comedy,” in which Pope and prelate, 
personae non gratae to this terrible mediaeval hater and 
singer of the most inspired and divine song of the world, 
are lashed and consigned to the lower Circles of Hell 
was never put on the Index. 

Another ‘‘fable convenue’’ of the crit'cs of the Middle 
Ages and Early Renaissance is the hatred of nature. 
imputed to the Christians of this time. A mediaeval 
Catholic, it is alleged, was forbidden to admire a flower, 
a forest, or a mountain peak. How so much of nature 
got mixed up in the singing of ‘‘Old Dan Chaucer,” a 
Catholic poet of the fourteenth century, we know not. 
Chaucer is essentially the poet of the daisy and robed it 
in verse long before Burns turned it over with his 


CATHOLIC CHURCH AND RENAISSANCE 83 


plough. Then we have the brown-hooded and gentle 
Friar, St. Francis of Assisi, who lived nearly two 
hundred years before Chaucer; and who was wont to 
call the birds of the air and the beasts of the field his 
brothers, and who composed canticles to the winds, the 
flowers, and the sun. Yet despite all this, St. Francis 
grew in favour with the Church and was canonized a 
few years after his death. 

As to painting at this epoch, some of its most ardent 
votaries were to be found within the sanctuary. A Fra 
Angelico, a Fra Bartolommeo, a Fra Lippo Lippi— 
albeit the life of the latter was scarred with moral scan- 
dal—all these glorified the canvas and brought down to 
earth beauteous glimpses of eternity to minister to the 
soul of man. 

Of course no one denies that there were worldly and 
political popes in those days of the Renaissance, but 
because of this there is no need on the part of historians 
to misrepresent facts and give no credit to the successors 
of St. Peter who, wearing the tiara in stormy and diffi- 
cult times when political and moral confusion reigned in 
wellnigh every quarter of Europe, directed the ark of 
Peter beneath the darkest skies till it at last found a 
haven of shelter on the shores of better and happier and 
more peaceful days. Many historians of the Italian 
Renaissance go so far as to claim that the paganism of 
the Renaissance under Pope Leo X reached the Papal 
Chair itself and that this Pope was a Christian neither 
in morals nor doctrine. Nothing could be farther from 
the truth. Leo X was of unimpeachable morality. Nor 
are there any grounds for saying that he lacked faith. 

It should be noted here, too, that frequently the 
painter gives us an accurate insight into the history and 


84 THE GENESIS OF CHRISTIAN ART 


spirit of his times. Take, for instance, the frescoes with 
which Ghirlandaio has covered the walls of Santa Maria 
Novella in Florence. We have in these the outward 
semblance of the men and women of the time, and even 
portraits of some of the most famous. Machiavelli is 
the exponent of the dominant political ideas of the age; 
Politian presents the highest point attained by its 
scholarship; Guicciardini is its exact and impartial 
historian; Marsilio Ficino and Pico della Mirandola 
unfold its fashionable philosophy, and the sermons of 
Savonarola tell us of its moral and spiritual eondition. 

Again it should be remembered that great periods of 
transition are invariably periods of religious deadness 
and of dissolution of manners. And in this period of the 
Renaissance the world was passing through a great 
revolution, spiritual, moral, and political. Nor should 
we forget to note in connexion with this period that in 
the Italy of the fourteenth century there was not a 
single legitimate power. ‘Take, for instance, the types 
of the Tyrants of Italy in the fourteenth and fifteenth 
centuries—the Viscontis, the Sforzas, and the Medicis. 
Not one of them possessed a legitimate title to sov- 
ereignty. Asa consequence of this, the Christian land 
fell into contempt. After trampling the Church under 
foot all their lives, as a writer tells us, most of these 
triumphant adventurers died laughing at her excom- 
munications. | 

But to return to art, how did paganism gain the 
ascendancy among the Renaissance artists in both 
sculpture and painting? The explanation is both easy 
and obvious. ‘The political and social conditions in 
Italy in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries produced, 
at least among Italians of the higher classes, a psycho- 


CATHOLIC CHURCH AND RENAISSANCE 85 


logical and moral state singularly appropriate to the 
comprehension and reception of the lessons of antiquity. 

Pagan inspiration came to art from two sources: 
Rome and the Court of the Medici. In the presence of 
the picturesque ruins in Rome, Florentine painters, who 
had been invited there by Pope Sixtus IV, returned with 
their minds stored with classical reminiscences. The 
paganism which prevailed at the Court of the Medici 
was the result of corruption. Fra Lippo Lippi, to whom 
may be traced the earliest note of decadence, Pollaiuolo, 
Ghirlandaio, and Signorelli had gained the favour of 
Lorenzo dei Medici, and as a consequence of this their 
art not alone became secularized, but it lost much of its 
spiritual note and accent as it sank to the level of the art 
of pagan antiquity. At this stage the whole motif in 
art, while its technique had steadily advanced, became 
changed. Ruskin makes this clear where he says: 
“The early masters used the powers of painting to show 
the objects of faith, whereas the later schools used the 
objects of faith that they might show their powers of 
painting.’ Louis Gillet in his article on Painting in the 
Catholic Encyclopedia says: ‘The early Renaissance 
was a fortunate period in which the simplicity of the 
soul was not marred by the discovery of nature and art.” 
Assuredly a knowledge of the forces at work during this 
complex period is absolutely essential to a clear and 
adequate comprehension of the development of both 
art and literature within this creative period so rich in 
its cultural contributions to mankind. 


CHAPTER X 


WHERE THE ART SEEDS WERE QUICKENED 


Let us in this chapter give some attention to those 
centres in Italy and north of the Alps where the art 
seeds were quickened, during this blossoming epoch,when 
painter, sculptor, and architect translated their dreams 
into the full glory of a rich and ripened art. Beginning 
with Nicola Pisano, Duccio, Cimabue, and Arnolfo di 
Cambio early in the thirteenth century, art so developed 
during the next three hundred years that as the fifteenth 
century was drawing to a close almost every city in 
Italy had a school of art that could boast of having 
produced great masters of architecture, sculpture, and 
painting. The same might be said, also, to some extent, 
of the schools of art north of the Alps. 

In the history of art the term ‘‘school of painting”’ 
has two significations. It may have reference to a period 
or to a district. Again, there is what might be called a 
cosmic development of art and a personal development 
of art. The art of Egypt was impersonal, so was largely 
the art of the Middle Ages. On the other hand, Greek. 
art was personal and so was the art of the Italian 
Renaissance. While keeping clearly in mind therefore 
the influence of individual artists as well as the groups of 
artists who form ‘‘schools,’”’ we must take note espe- 
cially of the particular centres where the art seeds were 
quickened and where certain forces, religious or intel- 

86 


WHERE ART SEEDS WERE QUICKENED 87 


lectual,—mayhap social—stimulated the development 
of art and lent it the dew and sunshine that gave it 
blossom and fruitage in those ripening years of European 
civilization. 

Among the communes of Italy no other city is so 
worthy of our attention as Florence, though in point of 
time in its art development Siena should take preced- 
ence, as the Republic of Siena enjoyed political inde- 
pendence and freedom one hundred years before 
Florence. Because of this, art reached an earlier 
development in Siena than in Florence. Yet it is to 
Florence we turn for the great quickening of the art 
seeds cast in the soil of those three centuries so full of 
the splendour of inspiration and human achievement. 
To Tuscany (Florence and Siena) to Umbria and to 
Venice are due, on the whole, the really creative forces 
of Italian painting. So we turn at once with a predilec- 
tion to beautiful Florence on the Arno, full of grandeur 
and grace and a certain ruggedness of charm. If you 
would obtain a pleasing and adequate view of Florence, 
go to the Piazza Michelangelo near the Church of San 
Miniato as the sun is sinking in the west. On the right 
is Fiesole with its slender campanile, and still farther to 
the right are the Appenines, Vallombrosa, and the 
Casentino with its picturesque walls, and on the left 
the purple Arno, which loses itself in the distance. 

This city of suavity and austerity, mysticism and 
sober irony, elegance and voluptuousness, has dowered 
Italy with a wealth of art transcendant in its splendour, 
surpassing that of any other art centre in Europe. 
Among its churches and cloisters there is none more 
historic than the ancient Baptistry of San Giovanni, 
which has watched over the history of Florence from 


88 THE GENESIS OF CHRISTIAN ART 


its very beginning. Ruskin designates San Giovanni as 
“the central building of Etrurian Christianity.” It 
dates from the seventh century and was remodelled in 
1190 and again in the fifteenth century, and is octagonal 
in form. Dante mentions it twice with veneration in 
the Paradiso (XV 136-37; XVI 25-27). The three 
massive bronze doors of the Baptistry are unparalleled 
in the world; one of them is the work of Andrea Pisano; 
the remaining two are the masterpieces of Lorenzo 
Ghiberti and were declared by Michelangelo fit to serve 
as the gates of Paradise. San Giovanni was in early 
years the Duomo of Florence. Then we have the 
churches of San Lorenzo, San Miniato, San Marco, 
Santa Croce, Santa Maria Novella, Santa Maria del 
Carmine, Santa Maria Nuova, Santo Spirito, Santa 
Maria del Fiore (the Cathedral), the Church of Ogni- 
santi, Santa Trinité, and San Michele in Orto. 

In nearly all these churches there is a wealth of sculp- 
ture and painting of the utmost interest and value to the 
student of art. For instance, in the Church of San 
Lorenzo there is the wonderful sculpture of Michel- 
angelo; in San Marco the paintings of Fra Angelico and 
Fra Bartolommeo; in Santa Croce the work of Giotto, 
Agnolo Gaddi, and Luca della Robbia. It should be 
noted, too, that Santa Croce is the Westminster Abbey 
of the great Florentine dead. In the Church of Santa 
Maria Novella, which as a Dominican church corres-— 
ponds to the Franciscan Church of Santa Croce, the 
former being built in 1278 and the latter in 1294, there 
are frescoes by Fra Lippo Lippi, Ghirlandaio, Gaddi, 
Orcagna and Fra Angelico, and a painting by Simone di 
Martino. In the Brancacci Chapel in the Church of 
Santa Maria del Carmine may be seen the great frescoes 


WHERE ART SEEDS WERE QUICKENED 89 


of Masolino, Masaccio and Fra Lippo Lippi. Nor should 
we fail to mention here Giotto’s campanile, that “‘lily of 
Florence blossoming in stone.’’ And finally we have the 
Church of San Michele in Orto, with its marvellous 
tabernacle—the work of Orcagna. 

Let us now turn for a moment to consider briefly Siena 
and San Gimignano as art centres. In no other city in 
Italy was the Byzantine developed to such perfection as 
In Siena. The Font for the Baptistry and the Duomo 
bear witness to Quercia, a Sienese, asa sculptor. Then 
among painters of Siena we have Duccio, a contempor- 
ary of Cimabue. This painter brought the Byzantine 
manner to its utmost perfection. There is also the great 
allegorical work of Ambrogio Lorenzetti to be seen in 
the Palazzo della Signoria of Siena. Ghiberti calls 
Ambrogio the famosissimo e singularissimo maestro. He 
is generally regarded as the greatest and most imagina- 
tive painter that Siena has produced. The student 
should also note the fine pulpit in the Duomo, the work 
of Niccola Pisano. There are two chief centres of art in 
Siena: the Academy of Fine Arts and the Library of the 
Cathedral. In the library will be seen the frescoes of 
Raphael and Pinturicchio. A Virgin and Child with the 
Infant St. John by Sodoma, in the Academy of Fine 
Arts, shows the influence of his teacher, Leonardo da 
Vinci. In San Gimignano there is work by Lippo 
Memmi and the Florentine Benozzo Gozzoli, a disciple 
of Fra Angelico. 

A word here as to Pisa as an art centre. Besides being 
the birthplace of Niccola Pisano, whose famous pulpit is 
in the baptistry of the Duomo, Pisa holds much interest 
for the student of art because of its architecture and its 
unique Campo Santo, which is the pride of Pisa. It is 


90 THE GENESIS OF CHRISTIAN ART 


called Il Campo Santo—Holy Field—as therein is con- 
served the Holy Earth brought from Mount Calvary by 
fifty Pisan galleys in 1188. The structure, with its 
surrounding walls and chapel, was completed in 1278. 
Some of the best frescoes on the walls are the work of 
Benozzo Gozzoli, who is buried here beneath his own 
fresco entitled ‘Joseph interpreting Pharaoh’s Dream.” 
Perhaps the most valuable of Gozzoli’s work is at 
Montefaleo and in the Riccardi Chapel in Florence. — 
Among the series of frescoes on the walls of the Campo 
Santo by Gozzoli, the most striking are those represent- 
ing the Drunkenness of Noah. There are also frescoes 
dealing with the story of St. Ranieri by the Sienese 
painter Memmi in the Campo Santo. Then there are a 
series of frescoes of which the most impressive is the 
Triumph of Death, the author of which is not known. 

Again Assisi and Perugia are two great art centres. 
In truth, Assisi is regarded as a very cradle of Italian 
art; for to the tomb of St. Francis came in pilgrimage 
painters from both Siena and Florence. The work of 
Cimabue and Giotto, the latter having visited Assisi 
twice, may be seen in the Basilica of St. Francis. The 
real Umbrian school of painters had birth in Perugia, 
its greatest painter being Perugino, the teacher of 
Raphael. Some of the earlier painters of Perugia were 
Benedetto Bonfigli and Fiorenzo di Lorenzo. Two art 
centres influenced Perugia—Siena and Assisi. From 
the three the Mystic School had birth. Nor is Padua 
without interest to the art student. Here in the Chapel 
of the Arena is the great fresco work of Giotto repre- 
senting the life of our Lord and His Blessed Mother. 
It was while at work on these frescoes that Giotto met 
Dante at Padua. It may be said that the Paduan School 


WHERE ART SEEDS WERE QUICKENED 91 


of Painting was founded on classicism by Squarcione, 
whose eminent pupil was Mantegna. 

Among Italian cities Venice was one of the last to be 
touched by the Renaissance movement in art. The 
city on the lagoons had been from an early time under 
the spell of Byzantinism, though even Byzantine art 
had no continuity in the city. It may be said that in 
the fourteenth century Venice was little influenced by 
the artistic life of other regions. The student should 
note, too, that while in Rome everything has an air of 
grandeur and in Florence an accent of grace, in Venice 
everything inclines to magnificence. The Venetian 
School of Painting really began with the influence and 
visit of Gentile da Fabriano to Venice, and the work of 
Jacopo Bellini and his two sons, Gentile and Giovanni. 
Jacopo Bellini had passed almost all his life in the 
district of the Marches and thus came in contact with 
Umbria. He became a pupil of Gentile da Fabriano. 
It was, however, with his two sons that Venetian art 
really rose to a complete personality and to an unparal- 
leled splendour. St. Mark’s, the Church of the Frari, 
and Santa Maria Formosa are among the finest churches 
in Venice. Its chief art gallery is the Academy. A visit 
to nearby Murano will also well repay the art student. 

We have already said that Florence has been the 
greatest creative force in the art of Italy. Yet we must 
not forget the share that Rome, the seat of the Papacy 
for well-nigh nineteen hundred years, has had in 
fostering Christian art. It is true we cannot speak of a 
Roman School of painting, for there never was such 
a distinct school. But it was the spiritual inspiration of 
Rome as the centre of the Christian world and the 
patronage of successive Popes that first nourished and 


92 THE GENESIS OF CHRISTIAN ART 


then singularly and devotedly encouraged and aided the 
genius of the painter during the time of the great art 
blossoming in Italy. 

We must go to Rome to see such magnificent eccles- 
iastical structures as the Basilicas of St. Peter’s, Santa 
Maria Maggiore, St. John in Lateran, St. Paul Outside 
the Walls, Santa Croce in Gerusalemme, Santa Maria 
in Trastevere, and the Church of the Gesu and Santa 
Maria del Popolo. All these are adorned with sculpture — 
and art of the great masters. Then there is the Sistine 
Chapel, containing some of the finest work of Florentine 
painters, and the Camera della Segnatura of the Vatican, 
which is a witness for all time to the incomparable 
genius of Raphael. Add to these the Vatican Museum, 
the Vatican Pinacoteca, the National Museum, the 
Capitoline Museum, the Lateran Museum, the Bar- 
berini Gallery, the Borghese Gallery, the Doria Gallery 
and the Rospigliosi Palace, and you have some idea of 
the art wealth of Rome. 

North of the Alps the student would do well to visit, 
not Brussels and Antwerp with their excellent art 
galleries, but rather Bruges and Ghent, and, in Ger- 
many, Cologne and Nuremberg. Here will be found the 
centres in northern Europe where the early art seeds 
were quickened. The two brothers Hubert and Jan 
Van Eyck founded the Bruges School of Painting early 
in the fifteenth century. The most important work of 
these two brothers is ‘““The Adoration of the Lamb,” 
of which the central portion is to be seen at St. Bavon’s 
at Ghent. 

Then there is the mystic painter, Hans Memling, who 
was a German by birth and studied for some time at 
Cologne. In him there is an alliance of German spirit- 


WHERE ART SEEDS WERE QUICKENED 93 


uality with Flemish technique. Cologne had an early 
school of painting of anonymous masters:—the Master 
of the Passion of Lyversberg, the Master of the Death 
of Mary, the Master of the Holy Family; and the 
School of Nuremberg had its two famous painters, 
Wohlgemuth and Pleydenwurff, to be followed later on 
by the great Albert Durer, who deserves in some 
respects to be ranked with the best of the Italian 
Renaissance painters. 


CHAPTER XI 


FOUR NOTABLE SCULPTORS 


The development of Gothic sculpture north of the 
Alps was really coeval with the development of Gothic 
architecture. Indeed, we should not forget that as 
Greek art flowered in the Parthenon, so Christian art 
flowered in the Cathedral. Sculpture, too, is a compo- 
nent part of the true Gothic style of architecture. It is 
interesting to trace, through Byzantine highways and 
the stormy wastes of barbaric desolation, the timid foot- 
prints of art, till at length architecture and sculpture 
find a congenial home, where Chivalry and the Crusades 
have built altars dedicated to the highest and noblest 
aspirations of the soul. 

Now, at last, we find sculpture taken into the house- 
hold of the faith—accepted in the family of Christian 
art. But preceding the full flowering of Christian art 
there had first to be a Gethsemane and Crucifixion 
before the dawn of a glorious Resurrection. In all this 
it was simply spiritual beauty clothing itself in the 
raiment of material beauty. There could not be, and 
there should not be, a divorce between these twain. 
They should but go hand in hand, material beauty ever 
mirroring spiritual beauty. 

It should be noted here that, while Gothic sculpture 
north of the Alps was glorifying the portals and facades 
of a Notre Dame de Chartres, a Notre Dame de Paris, 

04 


FOUR NOTABLE SCULPTORS 95 


a Notre Dame de Reims, and a Notre Dame d’Amiens. 
south of the Alps architecture, as a mode of expression, 
quite outran sculpture; so that not until the time of 
Niccolé Pisano, who was born in Pisa in 1204, did the 
artist’s skillin any way answer to his idea. When sculp- 
ture did develop in Italy it was used, not as in Germany 
and France, for the decoration of portals and facades, 
but in pulpits, altars, and sepulchral monuments. 

We shall single out in this chapter for study and 
consideration four great Italian sculptors: Niccola 
Pisano, Lorenzo Ghiberti, Donatello, and Luca della 
Robbia, covering a period of almost three hundred years 
—from the birth of Pisano in 1204 to the death of della 
Robbia in 1482. These were among the most fruitful 
years, not alone in Italian sculpture, but in Italian 
architecture and painting as well. 

It may be said that Niccola Pisano bears the same 
relation to plastic art that Giotto does to painting. 
But there is this difference between the Pisan sculptor 
and the Florentine painter: the sculptor was influenced 
by both classicism and nature, while the painter was 
influenced only by nature and the world around him. 

We believe, however, that historians of art, in con- 
nexion with the art development of Niccola Pisano, 
make too much out of the story of the Graeco-Roman 
sarcophagus brought to Pisa by a Pisan galley, early in 
the thirteenth century, and utilized for the reposing dust 
of the Countess Matilda of Tuscany. The reliefs on 
this sarcophagus of the legend of Phaedra and Hippo- 
lytus no doubt touched and quickened the artistic spirit 
and feeling of Niccola, but it did not give him creative 
power. Adventitious circumstances, in themselves, do 
not create or make possible poets or painters. They 


96 THE GENESIS OF CHRISTIAN ART 


often stimulate genius, itis true. Again, the artist never 
borrows his fire from alien altars. The divinity is 
entirely his own; though, of course, circumstances may 
help to fan the flame upon the altar. 

There is some dispute as to the birthplace of Niccola 
Pisano, which we have given as Pisa, some holding that 
he was born in the province of Apulia in Southern 
Italy. Niccola was both architect and sculptor. In 
truth, he was the greatest architect of his century and 
made himself memorable as the inaugurator of the 
Tuscan-Gothic style; but our chief concern with him 
here is as a sculptor. His first sculptural relief appears 
to have been a Descent from the Cross cut about 1233 
in a lunette over the north door of San Martino at 
Lucca. It is, however, with the pulpits of Pisa and 
Siena that Niccola’s reputation is most closely connected. 

Without crediting the genius of Niccola with all that 
is claimed for him, we can certainly say that he realized 
sculpture’s opportunity, and with his chisel opened the 
road which every supreme artist has since followed. 
Into the creation of the Baptistry of Pisa enters the 
influence of both nature and antiquity. It dates from 
1260 and is a white marble structure, hexagonal in 
shape, supported by columns at its angles, and by a 
central pillar. Three of these columns rest on the backs 
of lions, and a recumbent lion guards the steps. Over 
the capitals are allegorical representations of the Vir- 
tues, while prophets and evangelists lean along the 
intervening arches; above these runs the body of the 
pulpit, with scenes of the Nativity, Adoration of the 
Magi, Circumcision, Crucifixion and Last Judgment 
carved in such high relief that the figures are almost in 
the round. 


FOUR NOTABLE SCULPTORS 97 


The next great work of Niccola was the ark, or shrine, 
which holds the remains of St. Dominic at Bologna. 
This shrine, arranged in three stories, required centuries 
for its full completion. The pulpit in Siena Cathedral 
followed this (1268) and is the most magnificent, but not 
the most beautiful, of all Niccola’s works. It is larger 
than the pulpit at Pisa, and somewhat similar to it in 
design, save that the Pisan pulpit is hexagonal and this 
is octagonal. Niccola’s last great work of sculpture was 
the fountain in Perugia. This is a series of basins rising, 
one above another, each with sculptured bas-reliefs. In 
this Niccola was aided by his son Giovanni, the work 
being completed in 1277. Niccola Pisano also designed 
many beautiful churches, amongst others San Trinita at 
Florence, which Michelangelo loved so much that he 
called it his lady—la mia Dama. In 1278 Niccola 
Pisano was laid to rest in the Campo Santo, Pisa, 
leaving his son, Giovanni, a worthy successor to his 
great talents both as an architect and sculptor. 

Lorenzo Ghiberti was born at Florence about 1378, 
and died there November 1445. Ghiberti learned the 
trade of a goldsmith, which in his day included almost 
all varieties of plastic arts. In the early stage of his 
artistic career he was known as a painter in fresco; and 
when the plague broke out in Florence, Ghiberti re- 
paired to Rimini, where he executed a highly prized 
fresco in the palace of the Sovereign Pandolfo Mala- 
testa. While there, his stepfather Bartoluccio induced 
him to return to Florence and take part in the great 
artistic contest for designs for the second bronze door 
on the north side of the Baptistry of San Giovanni. The 
prize, which was offered by the merchants’ guild of 
Florence, in 1401, was carried off by Ghiberti, one of 


98 THE GENESIS OF CHRISTIAN ART 


his rivals being the great architect and _ sculptor, 
Brunelleschi. The subject for the artists was the 
sacrifice of Isaac, and the competitors were required to 
observe in their work a certain conformity to the first 
bronze door of the baptistry executed by Andrea Pisano 
about one hundred years previously. The first of these 
two bronze doors occupied Ghiberti twenty years. 

When Ghiberti had finished the first portal on the 
north side, he began work on the second or main portal, 
on the east side, which was completed in 1452.. This 
portal shows an advance on the first, revealing greater 
freedom in the treatment. Ghiberti was a supreme 
master of technique. In his sense of the beautiful and 
in originality Ghiberti may be regarded as a precursor 
of Raphael. It was of this second portal executed by 
Ghiberti that Michelangelo said it was worthy of being 
the gate of Paradise. Other chief works of Ghiberti 
were his three bronze statues of St. John the Baptist, 
St. Matthew, and St. Stephen, executed for the Church 
of San Michele in Orto and a bas-relief for the coffin of 
St. Zenobius in the Florence Cathedral. Ghiberti has 
also given us the first history of Italian art, preceding 
the art historian Vasari by more than a hundred years. 

The third great sculptor of the early Renaissance was 
Donatello, who was born at Florence in 1386 and died 
there December, 1466. Like Ghiberti, Donatello, too, 
was early apprenticed to a goldsmith. When seventeen 
years of age, he accompanied his friend Brunelleschi to 
Rome. Their sojourn in classic Rome was fruitful for 
both. Brunelleschi, the architect, had gained valuable 
knowledge from his measurement of the Pantheon dome, 
while Donatello, the sculptor, gained a knowledge of 
classic forms and ornamentation. 


FOUR NOTABLE SCULPTORS 99 


Donatello was a prolific artist. Florence is full of his 
work. On his return from Rome to Florence he was 
engaged on the statues for Giotto’s campanile. For the 
Cathedral he executed “‘St. John the Evangelist”? and 
the “Singing Gallery.” For San Michele in Orto he 
executed the statues of St. Peter, St. Mark, and St. 
George. In some respects the latter is his finest work. 
This statue is absolutely Greek in its simplicity and 
plastic beauty. His marble David is in the Bargello. 
It is interesting to compare this David with Verrocchio’s 
bronze David and Michelangelo’s marble David, all of 
which are in the Bargello, which is now known as the 
National Museum. Donatello’s great equestrian statue 
is that of the Venetian Condottiere Gattamelata, which 
is at Padua. At Padua Donatello designed the choir- 
gallery. He also executed the bronze doors for the 
sacristy of San Lorenzo in Florence; and here in the 
Church of San Lorenzo this great sculptor was finally 
laid to rest beside his patron, Cosimo dei Medici. It 
should be added here that Donatello executed work in 
many cities outside of Florence, such as Siena and Rome. 
Donatello was a thorough realist and is said to have 
been one of the first modellers ‘‘with whom character 
and personality in the subject meant more than 
loveliness.”’ 

The last of the great quartette of sculptors who 
carried the torch of beauty, truth and light, during this 
great creative period in Florentine art, was Luca della 
Robbia, who was born at Florence in 1400 and died 
there in 1481. He is said to have studied with Ghiberti. 
His work is marked by great simplicity and loveliness. 
At an early age he was invited to execute sculptures for 
the Cathedral of Santa Maria del Fiore and the cam- 


100 THE GENESIS OF CHRISTIAN ART 


panile. For the organ-gallery of the Cathedral, della 
Robbia made the famous panels of the Cantoria, groups 
of boys singing and playing upon musical instruments. 
These panels are now in the museum of the Cathedral. 

Luca della Robbia’s Madonnas are especially full of 
charm and dignity and grace. He originated, too, a 
new and lovely phase of Christian art which is known 
as the Della Robbia earthenwares. These are seen at 
their best in Florence. A fresco portrait of Della 
Robbia by Vasari is to be seen in the Palazzo Vecchio, 
Florence. 


CHAPTER XII 


GIOTTO—ORCAGNA—FRA ANGELICO 


Giotto di Bondone, who was born in 1266 and died 
in 1337 is certainly one of the greatest figures in Italian 
art. Without crediting all the legends and stories of 
Vasari and others connected with his name. we can 
safely assert his pre-eminence as an artist and witness 
to the great part he played in the development of the 
art of the fourteenth century. Indeed, Giotto is by far 
the most distinguished name in the art of this century, 
which Ruskin designates as the century of the‘‘Christian 
Faithful School.” 

But as we study this early flowering of Italian 
Renaissance art, we must be on our guard lest we forget 
the great influence of Niccola Pisano and his two sons, 
Giovanni and Andrea, upon the early art development 
of this period. In truth, the influence of sculpture upon 
the painting of this time was most marked; and there 
can be no doubt as to the influence of Giovanni Pisano 
upon Giotto himself; and perhaps, indeed, Giotto’s 
influence upon Giovanni was in return no less great. 
The truth is, the renaissance in sculpture and in 
painting of this time went hand in hand. 

The story, however, of Cimabue finding Giotto as a 
shepherd boy drawing upon a stone one of the sheep 
which he was herding in the fields, near Vespignano, 
where he was born, is now generally regarded as a myth. 
We may nevertheless accept the fact that Cimabue 

101 


102 THE GENESIS OF CHRISTIAN ART, 


was Giotto’s teacher; though we think that Cimabue is 
credited with too large a place, even by so eminent an 
art critic as Ruskin, as an influence in the beginnings of 
Renaissance art. Undue Florentine civic pride and the 
fact that Dante mentions Cimabue in his Divine 
Comedy may have led to the origin of this. In the 
eleventh Canto of the Purgatorio, beginning with line 
94, Dante writes: 
Credetta Cumabue nella pintura 


Tener il campo ed ora ha Giotto vt grido 
Sicche la fama di colui s’oscura. 


(Cimabue believed that in painting he 
was master of the field, but today 
Giotto has the acclamation of the pub- 
licand Cimabue’sfameis overshadowed.) 


Dante also compares Cimabue and Guido Giunizelli, 
initiators of the dolce stil nuovo, the one in painting and 
the other in poetry, and Giotto and Guido Cavalcanti, 
perfectors of that style. Petrarch, by the way, said 
that he knew but two great painters in his day, Giotto 
and the Sienese Simone di Martino. The latter no doubt 
Petrarch met at Avignon, whither he had been invited 
by Pope Clement VI to execute frescoes for the Papal 
Palace. It was at this time, too, that Martino painted a 
portrait of Petrarch’s Laura of the Sonnets. This 
portrait still exists. 

Referring to Giotto and the age in which he lived, 
Ruskin says: 


Pure Christianity in this chivalric period divided 
itself into two great collateral powers—domestic 
and monastic—the Home and the Desert. And 
‘these two glories of Christianity were understood 
to the full by only one man—Giotto. 


GIOTTO—ORCAGNA—FRA ANGELICO — 103 


‘We cannot make the fact too clear that Cimabue 
never fully freed himself from Byzantine influence, as 
may be seen in the paintings that he has left us. Nor is 
his work in any way superior to that of his Sienese 
contemporary Duccio. Even his Madonna in the 
Rucellai Chapel in Santa Maria Novella in Florence, 
sometimes attributed to Duccio, is not a very great 
advance on the Byzantine. Cimabue, in our opinion, 
was not the great regenerator of art. This was reserved 
for Giotto, who delivered painting from its fetters, 
changing it, as Ghiberti says, “from Greek to Latin and 
finally rendering it modern.” 

Giotto truly represents the flowering of Gothic art. 
He did not rely on antiquity, but upon his own outlook 
upon his surroundings. As a eritic has said, his work is 
alive with a love of truth, and thrills with broad and 
generous sympathies. Perhaps the kernel of Giotto’s 
genius, as a painter, was his creative imagination. He 
always seizes what is of human interest, and then, 
with strong emotion, depicts it. He is as dramatic as 
Michelangelo is epical, or as Correggio is lyrical, or 
Perugino elegiac. Yes, truly, the man for the hour was 
Giotto and with him the new order of things began. 

There are three chief centres where one may study 
Giotto’s work: Assisi, Padua, and Florence. The 
Basilica of St. Francis in Assisi, which is regarded as 
the cradle of Italian art, holds in its keeping some of 
Giotto’s earliest work. But so many artists contributed 
to the adornment of this first of Italian Gothic churches 
that it is, at times, a little difficult to distinguish the 
individual work. We know that amongst the artists 
who were engaged in adorning the Basilica of St. 
Francis were the Pisan Giunta, the Roman mosaicist, 


104 THE GENESIS OF CHRISTIAN ART, 


Cavallini, Cimabue the Florentine, Giotto, and the 
Sienese Simone di Martino and Lorenzetti. There is, 
however, so much in the manner of Giotto that we can 
with fair accuracy pick out the frescoes that may be 
credited to him. The Basilica of St. Francis 1s impor- 
tant to the art student because it marks the transition 
from mediaeval art to Giotto. It should be remembered, 
too, that to Giotto and his disciples, St. Francis and 
Assisi, as art themes, held the same place that Rome 
and St. Peter did to the Tuscan and Umbrian painters 
at the close of the fifteenth century. Italian painting 
owes almost as much to St. Francis as Italian poetry 
does to Dante. The date of Giotto’s first visit to 
Assissi is surmised to have been about 1296. A few 
years later Giotto visited Rome, and, in collaboration 
with Cavallini, executed the Navicella, a mosaic for St. 
Peter’s, and the fresco in St. John in Lateran, repre- 
senting Pope Boniface VIII proclaiming the Jubilee of 
1300. In 1306 we find Giotto, at Padua, at work on the 
frescoes of the Arena Chapel. 

In the Church of Santa Croce at Florence Giotto has 
depicted a series of scenes in the life of St. Francis and 
the two St. Johns. His last great achievement, which 
he left unfinished, was the campanile at Florence. 
Ruskin calls this ‘‘the model and mirror of perfect 
architecture.”’ Giotto was much beloved by his con- 
temporaries, Petrach, Dante, and Boceacio. It should 
be noted here that to the intluence of Dante’s Divine 
Comedy may be traced much of the allegory that enters 
into the art of this epoch; and that the three heavenly 
stars of sanctity and science—St. Francis, St. Dominic, 
and St. Thomas—that shine in the Dantean firmament 
proved a light and inspiration to the painter of this day. 


GIOTTO—ORCAGNA—FRA ANGELICO 105 


Giotto was followed by many disciples who, while 
lacking his genius, perpetuated his teaching. Of these 
by far the greatest and most gifted was Orcagna, who 
was born in Florence in 1308 and died there in 1368. 
Orcagna was a kind of a fourteenth century Michel- 
angelo, being both architect, sculptor, painter and poet. 
We deal with him in this chapter because after Giotto 
his is the most illustrious name in the art of this century. 
His frescoes in the Strozzi Chapel, in Santa Maria 
Novella, have for themes the Last Judgment, Hell, and 
Paradise. The latter is very much admired, and has 
about it a grandeur that places it among the prominent 
frescoes of the age. It may be regarded as the most 
important Florentine wall decoration between the time 
of Giotto and Masolino. 

Orcagna’s great creation, however, is the Tabernacle 
in San Michele in Orto. This is a most exquisite piece 
of workmanship, carved in richly sculptured Gothic 
style. In the Campo Santo, Pisa, there are also two 
frescoes by Orcagna. It may be said that Orcagna, not 
only understood the art principles of Giotto, but he 
contributed elements of his own which led to the 
onward progress of art. 

The saintly and humanized Dominican monk, Fra 
Angelico, whose baptismal name was Guido, but who 
was known in religious life as I] Beato Fra Giovanni 
Angelico da Fiesole, occupies a distinct place by himself 
in Italian art. He was born at Vicchio, in the Tuscan 
province of Mugello, in 1387, and died in Rome in 1455. 
At the age of twenty he became a novice in the Convent 
of San Domenico at Fiesole, and the following year took 
the vows and entered the Dominican Order. 

It is difficult to say under whom Fra Angelico received 


106 THE GENESIS OF CHRISTIAN ART 


his early art-training. It may have been under Lorenzo 
Monaco. The influence of the Sienese School is certainly 
discernible in his work. Owing to-the turmoil incident 
to the struggle for the pontifical throne between 
Gregory XII, Benedict XIII, and Alexander V, Fra 
Angelico, being an adherent of the first named, had to 
leave Fiesole in 1409 and take refuge in the convent of 
his order established at Foligno in Umbria. The plague 
having broken out here, our young Friar betook himself 
to Cortona, where he spent four years, returning to 
Fiesole in 1418. It is said that when at Foligno Fra 
Giovanni came under the influence of Giotto. After 
remaining eighteen years at Fiesole, Fra Angelico was 
invited to decorate the new Convent of San Marco, in 
Florence, which had just been allotted to his order, and 
of which Cosimo dei Medici was a munificent patron. 
As Murillo is the painter of the Immaculate Concep- 
tion, so Fra Angelico is assuredly the painter of Angels, 
the Coronation of the Blessed Virgin and the Annuncia-— 
tion. These were the subjects of his predilection. In all 
his work there is a mystic piety, a holiness, a spiritual 
beauty that could only emanate from the brush of Fra 
Angelico. Before the time of Fra Angelico, Simone 
di Martino had painted the gates of Paradise with the 
children entering it, hand im hand; it remained for Fra 
Angelico to represent these children as celestially 
dancing their way through the gates of Paradise. Fra 
Angelico understood what Ruskin calls the sacredness of 
colour. ‘His brushes robbed the Hybla bees and left 
them honeyless.’’ No other painter represents so fully 
the idealism of mediaeval religious painting as Fra 
Angelico. It will be noticed, too, that he is very 
individual. Should you ask for his classification as a 


GIOTTO—ORCAGNA—FRA ANGELICO 107 


painter, we would be disposed to place him in the 
Sienese School, holding kinship with the Sienese painter, 
Lorenzo Monaco, who, as already stated, was probably 
his teacher. In his later frescoes at Rome and Orvieto it 
is worth noting that Fra Angelico reveals a little of the 
naturalistic manner. 

His work is scattered throughout the galleries and 
- churches of Europe. It may, however, be studied best 
in Fiesole, Cortona, Florence and Rome, where he 
passed his fruitful years. His chief work at Fiesole is 
the Madonna of the Great Tabernacle, which is in the 
Uffizi, Florence. But if you would understand and 
appreciate properly Fra Angelico, visit the old cloister 
of San Marco in Florence which is dedicated to his art. 
You will find the frescoed lunetites over the doors, repre- 
senting the gentle St. Dominic, founder of the Order, 
Peter Martyr, and Christ as a pilgrim, welcomed by the 
two Dominicans. In the refectory is the Crucifixion, 
and, when you pass up to the little cells, you will be in 
doubt as to which to admire most, the Madonna della 
Stella, the Virgin of the Annunciation, the Adoration 
of the Magi, or the very touching scene of the Weeping 
- Marys at the Cross. When you behold these beautiful 
paintings full of the sunlight of heaven, you realize, 
indeed, that Fra Angelico “worked for his God, for His 
praise and glory, often on his knees and weeping at the 
thought of his suffering Lord.” 

In the Uffizi is his Coronation of the Virgin, and a 
similar painting is in the Louvre, Paris, which Vasari 
considers the better of the two. In the Florence Aca- 
demy are the Last Judgment, The Flight into Egypt, 
The Deposition from the Cross, and the Entombment. 
In Cortona, in the Church of San Domenico, there is a 


108 THE GENESIS OF CHRISTIAN ART 


beautiful Annunciation. In the Corsini Palace, Rome, 
are the Ascension, the Last Judgment, and the Pente- 
cost, and at Madrid the Annunciation, and at Leningrad 
a Madonna and Saints. 

In 1445, when almost sixty years of age, Fra Angelico 
was invited to Rome by Pope Eugenius IV to decorate a 
chapel and a little later was offered by the Pope the 
Archbishopric of Florence, which the humble friar- 
painter declined; and on the death of Pope Eugenius IV, 
his successor, Nicholas V, the founder of the Vatican 
Library, retained Fra Angelico in Rome to decorate a 
chapel for him in the Vatican, the subject being the 
legends of St. Stephen and St. Lawrence. Fra Angelico 
could not paint sin or ugliness. His is truly the mystic 
poetry of art. Fra Angelico also worked on the Capella 
Nuova of the Orvieto Cathedral and was assisted in this 
by his pupil, Benozzo Gozzoli. He died when on a visit 
to Rome in 1455, and was buried in the Church of Santa — 
Maria sopra Minerva. His tombstone shows the 
recumbent figure of a Dominican monk. Pope Nicholas 
V wrote this epitaph on his tomb: Jt is no honour to be 
another Apelles, but rather, O Christ, that I gave all my 
gains to Thy poor. One was a work for earth, the other for 
heaven. A city, the flower of Etruria, bore me, John!” 


CHAPTER XIII 
THE MYSTIC SCHOOL OF PAINTING 


An art critic has affirmed that mysticism is to paint- 
ing what ecstasy is to psychology. The same writer 
advises us that it is in the lives of the saints rather than 
in the lives of the painters that proof of the interesting 
affinity between Religion and Art must be sought. 

In tracing the development of the different schools of 
painting in Italy, not the least interesting phase of this 
development is that which deals with the mystic element 
as it influenced the work of the painter at different 
periods of the Italian Renaissance. But first we shall 
note its rise ere we touch upon its influence on the 
different schools of painting of this great art epoch. To 
the mountains of Umbria let us then turn if we would 
know of the beginnings of the Mystic School of Painting. 
It did not have birth within the walls of either Rome or 
Florence. Where St. Francis breathed the peace of God 
and shepherded both bird and beast with the high 
courtesy of heaven, there mysticism took root and 
touched, in dream, the brush and pencil of the Umbrian 
and Tuscan painters who found theme and inspiration at 
his tomb. 

Truly, then, did the elements of mysticism dispersed 
henceforth, like so many wild flowers on the surrounding 
hills, in the modest villages of Tuscany, in little towns 
scattered along the sides of the Apennines, from Fiesole 

109 


110 THE GENESIS OF CHRISTIAN ART 


to Spoleto, but especially in the convents, which were 
the real sanctuaries of Christian painting, take root and 
blossom. We shall find its influence spread from Venice 
to Naples by Gentile da Fabriano, who was born in the 
duchy of Urbino in 1360; and from Florence to Rome by 
Perugino, who was born at Citta della Pieve nearly a 
century later. 

We have said that Gentile da Fabriano carried the 
teachings and influences of the mystic school of Umbria 
to Venice. The three Bellinis, Jacopo, Gentile, and 
Giovanni in succession reveal in their work this influence 
Then from Perugia comes a master painter who estab- 
lishes a school of painting into which mysticism enters, 
in full vigour, and which culminates in the work of 
Raphael. Perugino occupies in his relation to his pupil 
Raphael the same position that Verrocchio does to 
Leonardo da Vinci. Nor should we forget to mention 
here the name of another pupil of Perugino—Pinturic- 
chio, who painted in conjunction with Raphael at Siena 
and like the latter was invited to Rome to paint in the 
Sistine Chapel. 

But the great missionary of the Umbrian or Mystic 
School was unquestionably Perugino. He extended its 
influence all through Italy; and especially infused new 
vigour into the Sienese School. Pope Sixtus IV invited 
him to Rome to paint three large compositions in the 
Sistine Chapel. 

It was in Florence that naturalism first gained 
influence, and this required to be counterbalanced by 
the spiritualism of the Umbrian School. By the way, it 
will be noticed that in all the work of Perugino and the 
painters of the Mystic School there is a constant element 
which might be designated as seraphic. But not only 


THE MYSTIC SCHOOL OF PAINTING 111 


did Gentile da Fabriano, of the Umbrian School, 
influence the Venetian painters, but also such painters of 
the Florentine School as Fra Angelico and his disciple, 
Benozzo Gozzoli. The gentle Dominican monk from 
Fiesole, who dipped his pen in the sunlight of heaven 
when he painted angels, and knelt in prayer and adora- 
tion before the beauteous and celestial conceptions 
of his soul, belongs essentially to the Mystic School of 
Painting. 

Ruskin says that Cimabue had women to paint from 
pure as snow and bright as sunshine: the Blessed 
Virgin, St. Cecilia, and St. Agnes. Fra Angelico had a 
vision of angels more beautiful than ever appeared to . 
Jacob of old. That compunction of the heart and 
aspiration towards God, ecstatic raptures and a fore- 
taste of celestial bliss—these afforded Fra Angelico 
vision and exaltation when he glorified the canvas with 
the dreams of his soul. 

It is worth noting that it was the mystic painters that 
in nearly every instance were summoned to Rome to 
paint for the Popes—a Julius II, a Eugenius IV, and a 
Sixtus IV; and their work remains in the Eternal City 
-as the glory of the Umbrian School of painting. We 
should not forget to note here also the great kinship 
which existed between the Sienese School and the 
Umbrian School spiritually. We have already pointed 
out the probability that Lorenzo Monaco of the Sienese 
School was the early teacher of Fra Angelico, and that 
the latter was influenced by the Mystic School of 
painters, to which school Fra Angelico himself properly 
belongs. 

It will be observed, too, that the words Umbrian and 
Mystic are used here as really synonymous, for the 


112 THE GENESIS OF CHRISTIAN ART 


cradle of the Mystic School was virtually the tomb of 
St. Francis at Assisi, though two of the great creative 
centres of the Mystic School were Perugia and Siena. 
When we speak of the Mystic School, then, we mean all 
those painters who derived their inspiration at the tomb 
of St. Francis of Assisi, and from the spirit of the 
cloister, and that vision of faith which beatifies life and 
touches art in any form with immortality. 

Of Raphael Sanzio, ‘‘The Prince of Painters,” who 
early came under the influence of the Mystic School, 
through his teacher Perugino, it is his glory as an expo- 
nent of that School that he never permitted Paganism 
to share in the triumphs of his brush or pencil. 
Raphael’s early pictures are perhaps more attractive to 
the contemplative mind; while his latter are more pleas- 
ing to the active imagination. In his early pictures, too, 
the classical taste predominates; while in his latter 
work modern taste prevails. 

The little brown-hooded Friar of Assisi, whose 
saintship delights both heaven and earth, has be- 
queathed to the world, not alone in charity and 
poverty, a gospel of health for the healing of the nations; 
from his tomb, too, has irradiated the mystic light that 
glorifies and gives all art its true and treasured meaning. 


CHAPTER XIV 


SAVONAROLA AND ART 


Just when the Italian Renaissance in art and letters 
was reaching its apogee there appeared in the history 
of Florence the fiery figure of a Dominican friar, 
Fra Girolamo Savonarola, whose share in the civic, 
social, political, religious, and art life of the closing 
years of the fifteenth century entitles him to a place 
in our discussion here of the development of Christian 
Art. Around Fra Girolamo, his course and career 
and his tragic ending, have gathered much controversy 
and much discussion. To understand, however, the 
part which Savonarola played both in the political, 
religious, and art life of Florence, we must have a 
contemporary sense of history. This will lead us to 
understand the times and circumstances of which he 
became a victim, despite his sincere and high purposes 
of moral reform. 

It cannot be too strongly impressed upon every 
student of the Italian Renaissance, that it possesses 
really two distinct periods as regards the influence which 
Pagan art and literature exercised upon the Florentine 
people. At no time, moreover, was the Church abso- 
lutely swept into its vortex. There is unfortunately 
also a common impression that the dangerous ten- 
dencies of the Renaissance were not recognized by the 
Church. This is entirely erroneous. There were ever 

113 


114 THE GENESIS OF CHRISTIAN ART 


men in the Church who raised their voices in warning 
against the deadly poison of the false Humanism. 

As Monsignor Baudrillart, of the French Academy, 
maintains, it is the historian’s first duty to distinguish 
periods and to avoid confusing epochs. For instance, 
in the first half of the fifteenth century, from Innocent 
VIII to Nicholas V, Humanism had as yet borne no 
fruit; there was merely the revival of letters. Though ~ 
certain individuals were from the beginning of almost 
pagan morals and intellectual leanings, there were, on 
the other hand, many Christian Humanists; therefore 
Humanism in itself cannot be blamed for the utter 
demoralization of certain of its followers. The Popes 
of this epoch can be reproached only with having shown 
undue indulgence towards men who, outside their 
literary talent, deserved no esteem. They perhaps 
would have done better had they been more scrupulous. 

As we reach, however, the close of the fifteenth 
century, we find that the poison of Pagan antiquity has 
entered the very marrow of the morals of Florence. 
Under the corrupting influence of the Court of the 
Medici, both literature and art suffered. The four- 
teenth century, which is known as the age of aesthetic 
Christian art, gradually gives way to an age of profane 
tendency, and painting becomes subservient to this 
profane tendency of the period—to its classical pedan- 
try, luxury and frivolity, and above all to patrician 
vanity. Moral scandals, such as that of Fra Lippo 
Lippi, stain the garment of the Church. The discovery 
of a classical manuscript becomes in the eyes of many 
of much more importance than the discovery of a saint. 

This was the period of the founding of the Platonic 
Academy by Lorenzo dei Medici, or perhaps it would be 


SAVONAROLA AND ART 115 


more correct to say by Marsilio Ficino. Simultaneously 
with the founding of the Academy there was a great 
revival in Italian literature. This is what Carducci calls 
“Ol rinascimento della vita ttaliana nella forma classica’’ 
(the revival of Italian life in the classical form.) To this 
Academy belonged such distinguished names as Landini, 
who wrote the first Renaissance commentary on Dante’s 
Divine Comedy; Politian, the noted classical scholar 
and greatest Italian poet of the fifteenth century; and 
Pico della Mirandola, whose life and letters Blessed 
Thomas More translated and who is buried in the 
Church of San Marco. Now no age in its society is 
entirely corrupt. The profane tendency of this period 
in both art and literature had left many untouched. 
But what with luxury and vanity, the evil influence of 
the Medicean Court, the revival of the antique with its 
spirit of voluptuousness and corruption, and the weak- 
ening of Catholic life and discipline in the Church and 
educational institutions, the vigour of Catholic faith and 
practice soon became sapped or enfeebled. The flood- 
gates of enervation leading to the indulgence of sin and 
passion being thus opened up, it was truly an herculean 
task for even a Savonarola to stem the tide. 

To show how insidiously the profane note was intro- 
duced into the painting and sculpture of this time, it is 
only necessary to say that the portrait which had taken 
its place in Christian art at the very beginning of the 
revival, as may be seen in Giotto’s fresco in the Bargello 
representing Dante, Brunetto Latini and Corso Donati, 
now becomes in the hands of a painter such as Paolo 
Uccello the medium and means of mingling the revered 
personages of the Old and New Testament with secular 
personages of the day. Giotto never did this. When he 


116 THE GENESIS OF CHRISTIAN ART 


introduced his own portrait into a picture painted for 
the Church of Gaeta, it was in an attitude of prayer and 
adoration. We know further that. Lorenzo dei Medici 
suggested to Pollaiuolo as subject the Twelve Labours 
of Hercules; to Ghirlandaio, the story of the Misfortunes 
of Vulcan; and to Luca Signorelli, gods and goddesses 
in all their charms of nudity. 

We have now something of the setting of the stage for 
the advent of Savonarola, who had entered the Order of 
St. Dominic at Bologna in 1474. Savonarola was a man 
of rigid and ascetic life and early became a notable 
preacher and reformer of the licentious morals that then 
prevailed. In 1490 he preached a series of sermons in 
the pulpit of San Marco. All Florence thronged to hear 
him. In 1491 he became Prior of San Marco. Savona- 
rola began with an inner reform of the monastery, and, 
regardless of consequences, he attacked from the pulpit 
and furiously lashed the vainglorious, immoral, and 
pleasure-seeking life of the Florentines, with the result 
that many abandoned their evil ways and returned with 
contrite hearts to the practice of virtue. It was about 
this time that Roderigo Borgia became Pope under the 
title of Alexander VI. 

We have said that Savonarola was a victim of circum- 
stances. It is necessary to explain this here. Politically 
the Pope, like all the Italian princes and cities, except 
Florence, was opposed to the intervention of Chas. VIII, 
King of France, in Italian affairs. Savonarola supported 
this intervention. This brought him directly in conflict 
with Pope Alexander VI. Then again Savonarola had 
committed the unpardonable offence of having used his 
efforts to encourage the investment of capital in the 
Monte di Pietaé, founded for the purpose of saving the 


SAVONAROLA AND ART 117 


poorer citizens from the ruinous exactions of the usurers. 
So naturally Savonarola had for enemies all the mer- 
chants and bankers, who organized a formidable con- 
federacy against him, ramifications of which extended to 
Rome. 

At this time there were three factions in Florence: 
first, the partisans of Savonarola, known as Piagnone or 
Weepers. These advocated liberty and the restoration 
of the Republic and lamented the corruption of morals 
and the decay of prosperity in the city. Second, the 
Arrabbiati or Compagnacci. ‘These were aristocrats 
under the cover of political partisanship, and they 
indulged in violent and unbridled passions. They aimed 
at establishing an oligarchy and were disgusted with the 
pseudo-irresponsible monarchy of the Medici, but they 
dreaded equally the extreme democracy of Savonarola’s 
views. Finally, there was the Bigi party, supporters of 
the Medici. Of the three parties, the first and third 
sided against the second, and the second dreaded the 
first more than the third. 

To understand with what fatalism Savonarola was 
hurried on to his martyrdom, we must realize what 
bitter forces were at work against him and how he 
became a victim of these forces engineered to compass 
his destruction and death. Yet Fra Girolamo was not 
without friends. Indeed he had so swayed the whole 
city at one time to his teaching that he was designated 
the ‘‘Pastor of Florence.”’ He had also found innumer- 
able friends among the poets and artists of the day. 
Among these were Pico della Mirandola, Politian, 
Landini, Botticelli, Lorenzo di Credi, Baccio Della Porta 
(Fra Bartolommeo) and Luca della Robbia. 

Meantime Savonarola continued his sermons, which 


118 THE GENESIS OF CHRISTIAN ART 


were appalling exigeses on certain passages in the Apoca- 
lypse, from which he deduced with the accent and 
authority of a prophet a great crisis in the Church. In 
1494 Charles VIII came down from France and on 
November 19 of that year Piero and Giuliano dei Medici 
fled from Florence through the Porta San Gallo. A kind 
of theocratic democracy was then established in Flor- 
ence based on the political and social doctrines of 
Savonarola. 

The deadly work meanwhile of the factions in the 
political life of Florence did not abate. On Ascension 
Day, 1496, while Savonarola was preaching in the 
Cathedral, the Compagnacci raised a disgraceful riot, 
interrupted his sermon, and even attempted to take his 
life. He was summoned to Rome by the Pope, but 
refused to go, and some time after was excommunicated. 

Now it should be understood here, as Villari, the 
Italian historian points out, that Savonarola’s attacks 
were never directed in the slightest degree against 
the dogmas of the Catholic Church, but solely against 
those who corrupted them. The “Triumph of the 
Cross” when written by Savonarola was intended to 
do for the Renaissance what St. Thomas Aquinas had 
accomplished for the Middle Ages in his Swmma Contra 
Gentiles. Savonarola began now to talk of a future 
Council of the Church. He would appeal to the princes | 
of Christendom: the Emperor Ferdinand and Isabella 
of Spain, Henry VII of England, the King of Hungary, 
and ‘“‘that most Christian King,’ Charles VIII of 
France, to summon a general Council, depose the 
simoniacal usurper who was polluting the Chair of 
Peter, and reform the Church. This was the last straw. 
There was talk of Florence being put under an interdict 


SAVONAROLA AND ART 119 


and the Signoria or Civil Government knew that this 
would ruin the commerce of the city, so they bowed 
before the storm and forbade Savonarola to preach 
again on the following morning. On May 22, 1498, 
Savonarola and his two companions were condemned 
to death ‘“‘on account of the enormous crimes of which 
they have been convicted,’”’ and on May 25 they were 
hanged and their bodies burned. 

We do not think it is a question here of justifying the 
course of Savonarola or a question of condemning Pope 
Alexander VI for his crimes. We have to deal simply 
with the circumstances and conditions of the times 
which brought about his tragic fate. The writer knows 
from having lived for some time in the City on the Arno 
that nearly every Florentine is pro-Savonarola. Only 
ten years after his death Pope Julius II ordered an 
examination to be made into the grounds of the sentence 
passed on Savonarola by Alexander VI, and while this 
examination was going on St. Philip Neri implored God 
that this champion of Christian faith might not be 
subjected to the second condemnation. Raphael was 
the first to undertake the apotheosis of Savonarola by 
placing him among the illustrious doctors of the Church, 
in his great fresco of the Disputa in the Camera della 
Segnatura, in the Vatican. May we repeat here that 
Savonarola never questioned or attacked any dogma 
of the Catholic Church; nor is there any warrant for 
erecting his statue at the foot of Luther’s monument at 
Worms as a reputed “forerunner of the Reformation.” 


CHAPTER XV 


THE GREAT ART TRIUMVIRATE 
OF THE RENAISSANCE 


The bright dawn of Renaissance Christian art that 
glorified chisel and brush in the hands of a Niccola 
Pisano, a Giotto, and an Orcagna in the thirteenth and 
fourteenth centuries, has now grown into the culmina- 
tion of a full noontide splendour as we reach the close of 
the fifteenth and beginning of the sixteenth century. 
Masolino and Masaccio, Ghiberti and Donatello, 
Gentile da Fabriano and Fra Angelico, Ghirlandaio and 
Botticelli, the Bellinis and Perugino—all these have 
contributed to the development of Christian art through 
a period of wellnigh three centuries, till at last beauty 
and grace, strength and sublimity, wedded to perfection 
of technique, find expression in the great masterpieces 
of a Leonardo da Vinci, a Michelangelo, and a Raphael. 
The note of naturalism and decadence introduced into 
painting by a Fra Lippo Lippi and a Botticelli was 
counterbalanced by the work of a Perugino, a Giovanni 
Bellini, a Fra Angelico, and a Benozzo Gozzoli, so that 
while painting and sculpture during those centuries did 
not always pursue the transcendental aim of Christian 
art, they never became fully seduced from the spiritual 
source of inspiration; nor were they fully wanting at any 
time in the chrism of Christian faith. All this time, too, 
the Sienese School, especially under the influence of 

120 


ART TRIUMVIRATE OF RENAISSANCE § 121 


Perugino, while falling behind the painters of the 
Florentine School, remained faithful to the old tradi- 
tions of Christian art and contributed to its progress 
and development. 

Individual painters and sculptors continued to add 
something new and valuable to art. We have referred 
already to the work of Masolino and Masaccio in the 
Brancacci Chapel in Florence, which became a very 
nursery of Italian Renaissance painting; to the work of 
Ghiberti and Donatello; the influence of Gentile da 
Fabriano and Fra Angelico and Perugino of the Mystic 
School. In 1490 Ghirlandaio executed a fresco in the 
choir of Santa Maria Novella, which is perhaps the most 
magnificent of its kind in Florence. As to Botticelli, he 
occupies a unique place among the painters of Florence. 
It will be remembered that during the closing years of 
the nineteenth century there was a Botticelli vogue in 
art. Born in 1447, Sandro Botticelli became one of the 
most intellectual and thoughtful painters of the day. 
He could paint the soul. Ralph Adams Cram says that 
the culmination of mediaevalism and the inception of 
modernism centre in Botticelli. Botticelli was amongst 
the Florentine painters who went to Rome to execute 
frescoes for Pope Eugenius IV. He is the only painter 
of the time whom Da Vinci mentions in his treatise on 
painting. Notwithstanding, however, that Botticelli 
has painted many religious paintings, his work, as well 
as that of Fra Lippo Lippi, shows a step towards a 
secular treatment of religious subjects. It is interesting 
to compare the treatment of the Annunciation by the 
three painters: Simone di Martino known also as 
Memmi of Siena, Fra Lippo Lippi and Botticelli. That 
of Martino is a most mystical treatment, while that of 


122 THE GENESIS OF CHRISTIAN ART 


Botticelli in the Uffizi is a wonderful one; as a critic 
says, ‘‘a marvellous rendering of a moment.’ One of 
Botticelli’s best known paintings is his ‘‘Madonna of the 
Magnificat.’? It will be observed that in all Botticelli’s 
Madonnas there is a tinge of melancholy. There is, too, 
about all Botticelli’is Madonnas a certain haunting 
charm and elusive mystery which, with a certain vague 
yearning, make their fascination today. 

In the art life of Leonardo da Vinci there are three 
periods: the Florentine period, the Milan period, and 
his period of wandering. Born in Vinci, a little town 
between Pisa and Florence, in 1452, Leonardo’s genius, 
the most versatile in the whole history of art (he was 
painter, sculptor, architect, musician and poet) ripened 
at a time when almost every city in Italy had a school of 
painting and could boast of masters, and when, too, 
Italian art was about to reach perfection. This great 
epoch now being ushered in witnessed in art technical 
mastery, classic perfection, and ideal beauty of ex- 
pression. The genius of Da Vinci was universal. As a 
critic says, he endowed the flesh with spirit and the 
spirit with a longing that aspires. When a boy Da 
Vinci was placed in the bottega of Verrocchio in Florence, 
where he had for fellow-pupils Lorenzo di Credi and 
Perugino. Here he worked for some years, at least as 
late as 1476. He was admitted to the Guild of Painters 
in 1472. It was in Florence that Leonardo executed the 
cartoon of St. Anne, now in London, as well as the pic- 
ture, identical in subject but differing in composition 
now in the Louvre. There, too, on the wall of the Sala 
del Consiglio in the Palazzo della Signoria, he began the 
Battle of Anghiari; and there he painted his marvellous 
portrait of Mona Lisa, the wife of Francesco del 


ART TRIUMVIRATE OF RENAISSANCE 128 


Giocondo, and perhaps the St. Jerome in the Desert, 
now in the gallery of the Vatican. 

Mona Lisa, or Lisa Gherardini, which was her real 
name, was a Neapolitan, and in 1495 married Zanobi del 
Giocondo. Mona Lisa occupies in modern art the place 
that the Venus of Milo does in ancient art. Sometimes 
this painting is known by the title La Gioconda. A few 
years ago Mona Lisa was stolen from the Louvre, but 
later found in Florence. We are now in the century of 
Italian art—the fifteenth—that particularly honoured 
woman, whether the ingenuous Madonna of Fra 
Angelico, or the Venuses with a Madonna smile of 
Botticelli, or the haughty patrician or proud proletarian 
woman of Pollaiuolo and Ghirlandaio, or the princess of 
Pisanello. 

Leonardo’s earliest masterpiece is the Adoration of 
the Magi, which is in the Uffizi. To his early period also 
belongs his Annunciation in the Louvre. In 1481 
Leonardo was called to the Court of Ludovico Sforza in 
Milan, and his first Florentine period closed. During 
his first Milanese period from 1482 to 1499 Leonardo 
executed the Equestrian Statue of Sforza and painted 
the Virgin of the Rocks and his great fresco, the Last 
Supper, which is in the refectory of the Monastery of 
Santa Maria delle Grazie near Milan. Leonardo painted 
two Virgins of the Rocks; one is in the Louvre and the 
other in the National Gallery, London. Art critics in 
general are of the opinion that Leonardo painted the one 
in the Louvre first, though Julia de Wolf Addison, the 
art historian, holds the opposite view. 

The Last Supper is perhaps the most famous painting 
in the world. The subject of the Last Supper had been 


124 THE GENESIS OF CHRISTIAN ART 


already painted by several Italian artists, amongst 
others by Ghirlandaio, whose painting is in the refectory 
of the Convent of Ognisanti, Florence, and by Andrea 
del Castagno, whose presentment of the subject is in the 
refectory of St. Appollonia in Florence, and Giotto has 
also a Last Supper painted in Padua. All three are 
frescoes. Da Vinci’s conception of the subject is the 
same as that of the earlier masters of the Renaissance, 
but differs from that of Giotto’s. | 

Da Vinci’s Last Supper at Milan is wonderful for its 
variety contributing to unity. For this is the law of 
nature as well as art, that all parts should conspire to 
oneend. Da Vinci has arranged the Apostles, mobile as 
waves, in groups of three at the side of Christ, with His 
arms wide, motionless as eternity; and while the eye 
centres on the sweet, sad, and superhuman figure of the 
Nazarene, Christ says truly, with ineffable sorrow, 
comforted by divine charity and resignation, ‘One of 
you will betray Me.” 

It is doubtful if Michelangelo in his ‘‘Pieta” or 
“Christ’? or Raphael in his ‘Transfiguration’? ever 
reached the height of art in this painting. It may be 
interesting to know that the Oberammergau Passion 
Players follow closely Da Vinci’s grouping in their 
presentation of the Last Supper. We may note here 
that no other artist has attained Da Vinci’s place in the 
world of art with so few works to his credit. This 
supreme artist spent his closing years chiefly at Milan. 
In 1516 he accepted an invitation of Francis I of France 
to come to France as court painter, and died at Cloux, 
near Amboise, in April, 1519. 

There are men whose personality is greater than their 
work. Such was Michelangelo. Born near Arezzo, in 


ART TRIUMVIRATE OF RENAISSANCE = 125 


Casentino, March 6, 1475, this mighty genius, who was 
the very incarnation of a sublime and superhuman ideal- 
ism, is truly, by art and spiritual kinship, the son of 
Dante, as Phidias is of Homer, and Raphael of Petrarch. 
As with Dante, so with Michelangelo, if we would under- 
stand his art, we must know the man. Our problem, 
then, is to gain some conception of a majestic personal- 
ity. His conceptions were the conceptions of a veritable 
giant in intellect and imagination. Sculptor, painter, 
architect, and poet, his creative work is an image, a 
reflection of a master mind scaling the great heights of 
art, and in apocalyptic vision giving form to the mighty 
dreams of his soul. It is said that Dante tried to trans- 
late the politics of eternity into the terms of temporal 
power and mediaeval theology; but Michelangelo suc- 
ceeded in translating the great verities of life, under 
their sublimest form, into the terms of eternity. 

At fourteen years of age Michelangelo was placed in 
the studio of Ghirlandaio, who at this time was engaged 
on his great frescoes, in the Church of Santa Maria 
Novella. The progress of the young art student was so 
rapid that in a short time Ghirlandaio remarked: 
‘Already this youngster knows more than I.” About 
this time Lorenzo the Magnificent of the Medici was 
filling his gardens with classic sculpture, and established 
a school for plastic art under Bertoldo, a pupil of Dona- 
tello. Lorenzo sought among the artists for their 
cleverest pupils, and Ghirlandaio reluctantly parted 
with young Michelangelo. These were busy days of 
study for Michelangelo, who availed himself of every 
opportunity to gain a knowledge of sculpture and 
painting from the work of the great masters who had 
preceded him, He copied the frescoes of Masaccio, in 


126 THE GENESIS OF CHRISTIAN ART 


the Brancacci Chapel; studied the sculpture of Dona- 
tello; and it is said that, in order to gain absolute truth 
for the sake of his art, he studied anatomy in the 
hospital of Santo Spirito. A relief called the ‘‘Madonna 
of the Steps,” in the Casa Buonarroti, Florence, shows 
something of the touch and spirit of Donatello. 

His patron, Lorenzo dei Medici, having died in 1492, 
our young artist left Florence for Bologna and Venice, 
remaining more than a year in the latter city. Return- 
ing to Florence, he found the city stirred to its depths 
by the preaching of Savonarola. He did not, however, 
follow his fellow-artist, Bartolommeo, and throw his 
studies of the nude into the penitential fires. A statue 
of St. John the Baptist, in Berlin, and a Cupid, in the 
Victoria and Albert Museum, London, it is said, belong 
to this period. | 

In 1496 Michelangelo left for Rome, his visit being for 
the purpose of collecting a bad debt. Here he remained 
five years. The ‘Drunken Bacchus” in the National 
Museum, Florence, is one of his earliest Roman works, 
but his fame was made by his first great work, the 
celebrated ‘‘Pieta,’’? which is in a chapel in St. Peter’s in 
Rome. Michelangelo in this masterpiece enunciates the 
principle of sculpture that the marble is not merely to 
represent form, but to express thought and soul. In 
this masterpiece of sculpture Michelangelo united the 
grace and sublimity of the Virgin with the profound 
physical truth of a dead Christ. 

From his art dreams in the Eternal City Michelangelo 
was summoned to his home city, Florence, (1501) which 
was now filled with tumult and conflict. The Medici 
had been expelled, and, with patriotism all afire, he 
entered into the defence of the city. It was about this 


ART TRIUMVIRATE OF RENAISSANCE 127 


time that he produced his colossal David, which, after 
standing four centuries in front of the Palazzo Vecchio, 
was removed to the Academy, Florence, in 1874. There 
are two smaller works, the Madonna and Child, in 
Notre Dame Bruges, and the tondo in the Bargello, 
Florence, which also represent Michelangelo’s earlier 
art years. 

Meantime the great sculptor was summoned to Rome 
by Pope Julius II and given a commission to execute for 
the successor of St. Peter a mausoleum. Soon huge 
blocks of marble arrived at the Vatican, but suddenly 
troubles arose which resulted in Michelangelo’s hastily 
quitting Rome for Florence, leaving behind him the 
message: ‘‘Most Holy Father, I was this morning 
driven from the palace by the order of your Holiness. 
If you require me in the future, you can seek me else- 
where than in Rome.” This truly reveals the proud, 
hasty, irritable, and independent character of the great 
sculptor whom only the great warrior Pope Julius II 
understood. The work on the promised mausoleum 
stretched on and covered the period of several Popes, 
until it reached its final compromise in the work now 
found in the Church of St. Peter in Chains, in Rome, a 
facade with the well-known Moses in the centre, and on 
each side the figures of Rachel and Leah, signifying 
active and contemplative life. A critic holds that this 
Moses needs for setting Mt. Sinai and the great heavens 
above, just as the spirit in David needs space and the 
open air. Referring to Michelangelo’s Moses, Taine, 
the French critic, writes: ‘‘Moses is a living colossus 
and my first impression, on seeing it, was that if it arose 
the world would be ruined.” 

Pope Julius II next turned his attention to the dec- 


128 THE GENESIS OF CHRISTIAN ART 


oration of the Vatican and the rebuilding of the great 
Basilica of St. Peter’s, the foundation-stone of which 
had recently been laid. He had summoned Raphael, 
through the advice of his relative, Bramante, from 
Florence, and commissioned him to adorn the walls and 
ceiling of the Camera della Segnatura of the Vatican, at 
the same time entrusting the fresco work of the vault 
of the Sistine Chapel to Michelangelo. To this order — 
from the Holy Father Michelangelo demurred, main- 
taining that he was asculptor, nota painter. But Pope 
Julius, however, would take no refusal. 

The descriptive motif in these marvellous frescoes, 
now considerably injured, is the great drama of Creation. 
the passion and tragedy of the Fall, and the human 
incidents in the Deluge. It will be observed that there 
is a unity of thought in the decoration of the ceiling. 
In the triangular curves between the windows are the 
Prophets and Sibyls; in the corner spaces the Serpent in 
the Wilderness, David and Goliath, Judith and Holo- 
fernes, and the Hanging of Haman. “It is,” says a 
critic, ‘‘a wonderful ensemble and one scarcely realizes 
that not only the scenes themselves are the work of the 
artist, but that he has also created their noble setting of 
sculpture and architecture.”’ The confusion and tumult 
prevailing in Florence, recalled the patriot, Michel- 
angelo, to his mother-city, on the Arno, as director of the 
fortifications. 

And now, after having reached fifty years of age, 
Michelangelo was called upon to work on the tombs for 
the Medici, in the Chapel of San Lorenzo, which he had 
himself designed for the purpose. The Medici and 
Julian tombs are perhaps this master’s greatest sculp- 
tural undertakings. The two Medici princes were 


ART TRIUMVIRATE OF RENAISSANCE = 129 


Giuliano and Lorenzo, the son and grandson of Lorenzo 
the Magnificent. The two dukes are represented seated; 
Giuliano with the raised head of action, and on the 
opposite wall Lorenzo, his face under a helmet in 
shadowed meditation. Beneath Giuliano are the two 
colossal mysterious figures representing Day and Night. 
Below Lorenzo are the superb figures of Dawn and 
Evening. Against a third wall, opposite the altar, is 
placed a Madonna and Child of the same heroic mould. 
All the great soul of Michelangelo is in these tombs of 
the Medici; in these unfinished stones which a writer 
says one should admire on his knees. 

In 1535, when sixty years of age, the great artist was 
called to Rome by Pope Paul III and commissioned to 
complete the Sistine Chapel by the decoration of the end 
opposite to the entrance with a picture of the Last 
Judgment. His crowning work in architecture was the 
cupola of St. Peter’s, whose prototype, however, he 
found in Brunelleschi’s cupola of Santa Maria del Fiore 
in Florence. 

Michelangelo was primarily a sculptor, then a painter, 
and then an architect and poet. As a critic tell us, his 
genius created with as great pain as the mother who 
gives to the world the fruit of life. He saw beyond time, 
beyond historical space, and beyond the age and events 
of his own time. He delineated man, but not the man of 
history, of a particular time and place, but ideal, eternal 
man, with powerful limbs and immortal thought. His 
place is beside Aeschylus, Dante, Shakespere, and 
Beethoven. Reverent and religious, irritable and 
irascible, imbued with the most devoted filial piety, 
Michelangelo is unquestionably one of the greatest 
personalities, one of the most illustrious names in the 


130 THE GENESIS OF CHRISTIAN ART 


world of ancient or modern art. He died in Rome at the 
age of eighty-nine, a few weeks before his ninetieth 
birthday, February 17, 1564, and his body being borne 
to his beloved Florence, now rests in the Church of 
Santa Croce. 

Raphael is the third of the great art triumvirate of 
the Renaissance. While not so brilliant or versatile as 
Leonardo da Vinci, or so profound as Michelangelo, | 
Raphael possessed qualities which made more universal 
appeal to the world than did the extraordinary art gifts 
of either Leonardo or Michelangelo. 

Raphael Sanzio was born on Good Friday, March 29, 
1483, in the little mountain town of Urbino. His was a 
happy home in this little town, perched on a rocky sum- 
mit, standing clearly defined against the soft Italian sky. 
His father, Giovanni, was himself a lover of beauty, a 
painter, and a poet. It is true that he was not a great 
artist, though by some critics he has been given a place 
among Umbrian masters. 

Educated in the school of the Marches, with its half 
Umbrian and half North Italian bent, Raphael, at the 
age of seventeen, entered as an assistant in the bottega 
of Perugino, at Perugia, in 1500. He had as fellow 
student, Pinturicchio, by birth a Veronese. His 
master, Perugino, was then in the height of his glory. 
The influence of his first masters is plainly seen in 
Raphael’s early work; the peaceful gentleness of 
Timoteo Viti, the dreamy mildness and devotion of 
Perugino, and the decorative tendencies of Pinturicchio. 
This period in the art-life of Raphael may be designated 
the Peruginesque Period. Belonging to this period are 
the Crucifixion in London, the Coronation in the 
Vatican, the Knight’s Vision in London, St. Michael 


ART TRIUMVIRATE OF RENAISSANCE = 131 


and St. George in the Louvre, the Terra Nuova 
Madonna in Berlin, and the Marriage of the Virgin 
(Lo Sposalizio) in the Brera, Milan. 

In 1504, Raphael, armed with a letter of introduction 
to the gonfaloniére, Soderini, went to Florence, where 
the shrine of art was now resplendent with the work of a 
Leonardo da Vinci and a Michelangelo. ‘These were 
dark and terrible years in the history of Italy, albeit in 
the realm of art it was the very culmination of the glory 
and splendour of the Renaissance. Imagine the city on 
the Arno, with its Baptistry of San Giovanni, its 
Campanile and its memories of the immortal Dante, 
housing at the same time within its gates as guests three 
such great and gifted souls as Leonardo, Michelangelo 
and Raphael. 

When the latter reached Florence he found naturalism 
in its very peak of triumph. Savonarola had been 
vanquished. Raphael chose his friends among the 
vanquished party, forming a close intimacy with Fra 
Bartolommeo and Ridolfo Ghirlandaio, whose work he 
influenced through the spiritualism of the Umbrian 
School, meantime gaining from them in exchange a new 
vigour in tone of colouring. Raphael spent four busy 
years in Florence, assimilating all that was best in the 
art around him. During his stay in Florence he began 
his series of Madonnas, which are the charm of Christian 
art. Here, too, he painted his Assumption, which is in 
the gallery of the Vatican, and the Deposition from the 
Cross, now in the Borghese, Rome. In all these paint- 
ings it will be seen that he has never broken with the 
traditional style of the Umbrian School. Between 1506 
and 1508 the fertility of Raphael’s pencil was most 
marked. ,To this period belong the Madonna of the 


132 THE GENESIS OF CHRISTIAN ART 


Duke of Alba, in Leningrad; the Casa Tempi Madonna 
and the Madonna di Canigiani, both in the Munich 
gallery; St. Catherine of Alexandria and the Ansidei 
Madonna, both in the National Gallery, London; the 
Madonna del Baldacchino, destined for the Church of 
Santo Spirito, Florence, now in the Pitti Palace; The 
Entombment, in the Borghese, Rome, which was 
painted for the Church of San Francesco, Perugia; La 
Belle Jardiniére, in the Louvre; Madonna of the Grand 
Duke, in the Pitti; Madonna of the Gold-finch, in the 
Uffizi; the Madonna of the Meadow, in Vienna; and the 
Cowper Madonna. 

In 1508 Raphael visited his natal town, Urbino. 
Pope Julius IJ, who had ascended the Papal Throne in 
1503, aimed at restoring Rome to its rightful place as 
the Capital of the civilized world. He it was who pro- 
jected the building of St. Peter’s and the decoration of 
the Vatican. For this purpose he summoned to his aid 
the greatest architects, sculptors, and painters of the 
time. The architect, Bramante, had recommended to 
the Pope Raphael, a young artist of twenty-one years of 
age, whose youthful portrait, spiritual and feminine, 
painted by himself about this time, may be seen in the 
Uffizi, Florence. 

Raphael was commissioned to decorate the rooms of 
the apartments of the Pope. Already at the invitation 
of Pope Nicholas V and Pope Sixtus IV, Pier della 
Francesca, Signorelli and Perugino had worked on these. 
The first room painted was the Stanza della Segnatura, 
so called because the Papal Briefs were formerly signed 
and sealed here. Raphael commenced by painting the 
ceiling and four walls of this room, called the Segnatura, 
on the surface of which he represented four great 


ART TRIUMVIRATE OF RENAISSANCE = 133 


compositions, which embraced the principal divisions 
of the encyclopedia of the period: namely, Theology, 
Philosophy, Poetry, and Jurisprudence. It may really 
be compared with the allegorical epic of Dante. It is a 
composition without a rival in the whole history of 
painting; a witness for all time to the eternal glory of the 
Catholic faith and Christian art. Of the four, perhaps, 
Theology and Poetry are the most remarkable. The 
first fresco is Theology (called the Disputa). This really 
is a picture of the life of the Church and an affirmation 
of the Dogma of the Real Presence. This composition 
consists of two great divisions, Heaven and Earth, which 
are united to one another by that mystical bond, the 
Sacrament of the Eucharist. The personages whom the 
Church has most honoured for learning and holiness are 
ranged in picturesque and animated groups on either side 
of the altar on which the Blessed Sacrament is exposed. 
St. Augustine dictates his thoughts to one of his disci- 
ples; St. Gregory in his pontifical robes seems absorbed 
in the contemplation of his celestial glory; St. Ambrose, 
in a slightly different attitude, appears to be chanting 
the Te Deum; while St. Jerome, seated, rests his hands 
on a large book which he holds on his knees. Peter 
Lombard, John Scotus Erigena, St. Thomas Aquinas, 
Pope Anacletus, St. Bonaventure and Pope Innocent III 
are no less happily characterized; while behind all these 
illustrious men whom the Church and _ succeeding 
generations have agreed to honour, Raphael has 
ventured to introduce Dante with a laurel crown, and, 
with still greater boldness, the friar Savonarola. 

Parnassus, which allegorically represents poetry, is, 
as Mr. Gillet says, in the Catholic Encyclopedia, a 
synthesis of Humanism. 


434 THE GENESIS OF CHRISTIAN ART 


It shows a mountain-top crowned with laurel, 
where Apollo, surrounded by the Muses, his divine 
daughters, plays on the lyre; Homer sings, and 
about the inspired blind man is gathered his ideal 
family: Virgil leading Dante, Petrarch below 
conversing with Anacreon, Alcaeus and the wonder- 
ful Sappho. Thus on the poetic mount, beside the 
source of Helicon, the dream of Humanism is 
fulfilled. 

Additional frescoes by Raphael are those representing 
the School of Athens; Jurisprudence, representing 
symbolically the virtues, Moderation, Fortitude and 
Prudence; the Fire in the Borgo; the Mass of Bolsena; 
the Oath of Pope Leo III; The Coronation of Charle- 
magne by Pope Leo III; the Departure of the Hun 
Attila from the Walls of Rome, and the Deliverance of 
St. Peter from Prison. 

Other works belonging to Raphael’s Roman period 
are: the Aldobrandini Madonna in London and the 
Foligno Madonna in the Vatican Gallery. His Donna 
Velata in the Pitti Palace, Florence, was the model for 
both his Madonna of the Chair, in the Pitti, and the 
Sistine Madonna in Dresden. In Madrid, is his Holy 
Family with the Lamb; in the Academy of St. Luke, 
Rome, the Violin Player; in London, the Madonna of 
the Tower; and in the Louvre, the Madonna of the. 
House of Orleans. The Madonna of the Rose and the 
Madonna of the Fish in Madrid are said by some art 
critics to be the work of pupils. Add to these Raphael’s 
St. Cecilia in Bologna and his magnificent Transfigura- 
tion in the Vatican, which was not quite completed 
when the great artist passed away in 1520, at the early 
early age of thirty-seven. 


ART TRIUMVIRATE OF RENAISSANCE = 135 


The Sistine Madonna, now in Dresden, was painted 
1516-17 for the high altar of the Church of San Sisto at 
Piacenza, hence the name, Sistine Madonna. This 
superb painting is the apotheosis of motherhood. In 
this beautiful Madonna Raphael has made the nearest 
approach to painting the soul that has ever been 
achieved. The Roman period 1508-20 was the most 
glorious period in the art-life of Raphael. Then it was 
that he created perfect art, uniting as no other ever did 
the plastic perfection of form with the refinement of 
Christian sentiment. Other painters were greater in 
draughtsmanship, in colour, yet not, in composi- 
tion; but Raphael surpasses all in his incomparable 
sense of beauty. He crowns and closes the Umbrian or 
Mystic School, and to him is reserved the glory of 
having carried Christian art to its highest perfection. 


CHAPTER XVI 


RACIAL CONTRIBUTIONS TO CHRISTIAN ART 


There is no more fascinating subject than the study of 
racial contributions to art and literature. Art, viewed 
through a national or racial temperament, becomes 
doubly interesting. It is like studying the inheritance 
of children in a family group, noting their temperament 
and traits of character, and tracing this inheritance to 
their forbears. Both art and literature reflect this 
racial temperament, especially in its spiritual element. 
This is the chrism of the soul. Emotion is universal; 
it is common to every race, every nation; but the 
conception and mould differ as well as the degree of 
intensity which marks the creative and fashioning 
moment of inspiration. This chapter will, therefore, be 
devoted to a consideration of the racial contributions 
that have, from time to time, been made to Christian 
art. ‘These contributions of course will be under differ- 
ent forms; now it will be the glorious conceptions of the 
soul, as they embody themselves in a mighty Cathedral; 
now Carrara marble will take voice and form under the 
fiery chisel of a Michelangelo; now the brushes of a Fra 
Angelico and a Raphael will clothe with the raiment of 
emotion and the soft hues of colour the beauteous 
dreams of the soul. 

It was not, however, so much racial differentiation as 
the spiritual, social, and intellectual ideal of life that 

136 


RACIAL GIFTS TO CHRISTIAN ART 137 


distinguished Florentine, Venetian, and Umbrian art 
from each other. If, for instance, we compare the 
Umbrian, Venetian, and Florentine Schools, it will be 
found that the Florentine excelled in design and repre- 
sentation of form and felt the beauty of antique 
sculpture; the Umbrian School excelled in the expression 
of pious emotions and pure affections of the soul; it 
abounded in contemplative and mystical painters, but 
disdained the treasures of classical antiquity; while 
the Venetian School excelled in colour and had a 
passion for attaining perfection in it. 

Venice, amid her lagoons, was wrapt in a kind of 
Oriental dream. This beauty of colour, this love of 
pageantry enters into the work of her great masters. 
Notwithstanding this, Venice was not pagan at heart. 
What painters have made greater contributions to 
Christian art than the Bellinis, Titian, Tintoretto, 
Giorgione, Veronese and Palma Vecchio? It is true 
these Venetian painters did not have the religious or 
pietistic impulse of a Fra Angelico; and it is equally 
true that the decorative effect is primary in much of 
their work; but their themes are religious. Nor did 
they subordinate the spirit of these themes to the mere 
exploitation of their art. 

By far the greatest of Venetian painters is Titian, who 
justly earned the title of ‘‘the universal confident of 
nature.’’ He combined the qualities of Giovanni Bellini, 
Jacopo Palma, and Giorgione, of whom the first-named 
was his teacher. Rounded completeness stamps all . 
Titian’s work. He concentrated the multiplied pictorial 
gifts of the Venetian School and made himself inter- 
preter of a greater total of emotions than any of his 
predecessors. His great painting of the Assumption of 


138 THE GENESIS OF CHRISTIAN ART 


the Virgin, which was painted for the Church of the 
Frari, is now in the Academy at Venice. Furthermore, 
no painter, either before or after him, has known so 
well, how to interpret the beauty of woman as Titian, 
whose type of woman differs completely from the 
severe Virgin of Botticelli, the sphinx of Da Vinci, and 
the sweet Virgin of Raphael. Titian’s is full of warmth 
and full of life and its pleasures. It may be noted here 
that in no other place can Titian be studied and 
appreciated so well as in the Prado, Madrid. This 
great congress of masterpieces possesses no less than 
forty-two of his paintings. 

The racial contribution of Italy to Christian art has, 
indeed, been very notable. Her great architects have 
translated their dreams into a St. Peter’s, a St. Mark’s, 
and a Santa Maria del Fiore; her sculptors have given 
voice and form to the majesty and grace, nay to the 
sublimity that throbs in and animates her chiselled 
marbles; while the brush of her painters has glorified 
the canvases that reflect the eternal dreams of a Fra 
Bartolommeo, a Fra Angelico, a Perugino, and a 
Raphael. 

North of the Alps there has been, too, a goodly racial 
contribution to Christian art. England, during the 
great “Ages of Faith,” when this land was known as 
‘““Mary’s Dower,” reared her glorious Gothic Cathedrals - 
which are the despair of modern architects. Sculpture, 
however, in England has always been an orphan, while 
her painting, a very late blossoming in the centuries, 
has never been touched by the chrism of faith. France, 
stirred early in life by the very noblest impulses of 
faith when the religious knighthood of high emprise 
touched altar and throne, has made a wealth of racial 


RACIAL GIFTS TO CHRISTIAN ART 139 


contribution to Christian art. She it was that nursed 
and cradled through the centuries the true ideals of 
Christian architecture; so that today France possesses, 
without a question, the finest cathedrals, considered 
structurally or artistically, in the world. Nor is the 
sculpture of these cathedrals less a part of the splendid 
racial contribution of France to Christian art. 

The racial contributions of Germany and the Low 
Countries, Belgium and Holland, to Christian art are 
also conspicuous, albeit that the religious revolt in 
Germany early in the sixteenth century made impossible 
the progress of Christian art, crushing out the idealism 
of faith and chilling all the ardour in religious life and 
art and letters. This was the killing frost that nipped 
in the bud the first awakening of the great Renaissance 
in the land of the Minnesingers. But before this blast 
of negation had swept the land of the Elbe and the 
Rhine, the warmth of faith had reared a Cologne 
Cathedral and had touched the souls of the anonymous 
masters of painting of the Cologne School, whose tra- 
ditions of spiritual beauty in art were not entirely 
ignored or forgotten in later days by a Wholgemuth or 
a Diirer. 

The tradition of religious painting was never broken 
in Belgium. Memling and the Van Eycks preserved 
and handed it down to a Rubens and a Van Dyke. It 
is the glory of the Flemish School of Painting that it 
possesses in Peter Paul Rubens one of the great painters 
of the world. His is the great racial contribution of 
Belgium to Christian art. His Descent from the Cross 
in the Antwerp Cathedral is worthy of a place beside 
Raphael’s Transfiguration, Titian’s Assumption, and 
Murillo’s Immaculate Conception. 


140 THE GENESIS OF CHRISTIAN ART 


When we turn to Spain we find that its racial con- 
tribution to Christian art is strikingly great. Spanish 
genius is said to be assimilative rather than creative. 
Can this not also be said to some extent of the genius 
of any people? There is no more borrowing in Spanish 
art than there is in Italian or Flemish or English art. 
There was as much and even more intercourse between 
the artists of Italy and the artists of France and 
Belgium as between the artists of Italy and Spain in the 
fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. If there is one thing 
which has marked the Spanish people through the 
centuries, it is character, and character begets indi- 
viduality and initiative. 

Spanish art then is essentially a native art, developing 
from ideals of Spanish painters. But few Italian, Flem- 
ish, or German artists visited Spain to introduce new 
outside influences. ‘Titian in the days of Charles V was 
one of the few with whose work outside their own the 
Spaniards were familiar. As a matter of fact, in Italy 
the Flemish artists were constantly coming, and in 
Germany and Holland the Italians frequently made 
visits. Furthermore the Spanish Inquisition, of which 
we hear so much, had no more to do with the Spanish 
painting of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries than 
it had to do with Calderon’s great dramas or Cervantes’ 
world novel, Don Quixote. Superficial writers and 
biased art-critics disturb at all times the wisdom and 
truth of art and letters. 

The racial contribution of Spain to Christian art, as 
we have already said, is quite marked. Murillo alone 
painted no less than thirty Immaculate Conceptions. 
Many of these are in the Provincial Museum at Seville. 
Nor is Murillo, as Ricketts, the art historian, says, 


RACIAL GIFTS TO CHRISTIAN ART 141 


“vague and vulgar.”’ Murillo understood the ecstasy of 


Catholic Spain. He understood his own Andalusia. He 
was a man of great natural gifts. But an art gallery 
is not the place to study the paintings of Murillo. 
Spanish pictures do not seem at home in a crowded 
gallery. Painted for the Church by men to whom God 
and the Saints were more than art, they seem to 
demand their own environment of chapel, church, or 
cloister. 

This gospel and purpose of art, as pursued by Spanish 
painters, is set forth by Pacheco, artist, historian, and 
teacher of the great Velasquez, in these words: ‘‘The 
chief end of works of art is to persuade men to piety 
and bring them to God.” Spain held firmly to the early 
teachings of the Church that all art should minister to 
the soul. It is because of this that the racial contri- 
butions of Spain to Christian art are so considerable. 
It is because of this that the glorious dreams of a 
Murillo, a Zurbaran, and an El Greco glorified by 
brush and pencil adorn not alone the museums of 
Seville and Madrid, but the chapels and sacristies and 
cloisters of the great cathedrals of Spain. 


CHAPTER XVII 


THE CHIEF ART GALLERIES OF EUROPE 
WITH THEIR PAINTINGS 


The student of art, whether it be architecture, sculp- 
ture, or painting, will find that this art is widely 
distributed in many quarters of Europe. The great 
churches belong not to one, but many countries, the 
sculpture is found wherever genius has set up its shrine 
and is now housed in church and museum, while paint- 
ing has sometimes found a home not in the national 
galleries alone, but in church and cloister and among 
the private collections of art connoisseurs. 

To get the best out of art study we should know at 
least where the great masterpieces may be found. 
Every museum has a share of these masterpieces, and 
we hope in this extended chapter to tell not only the 
story of the founding and development of each art 
gallery, but add thereto a list of its important paintings. 
To Rome then we turn, with its Papal patronage of art, 
not only as the centre of the spiritual life of the world, 
but as the crowning synthesis of much that is highest 
and best in the art world of Italy. Its museums are 
so many, however, and its wealth of art so overwhelming 
that we shall indicate here only its most notable sculp- 
ture and paintings. 

142 


PAINTINGS IN EUROPEAN GALLERIES 148 


Masterpieces of Art in Rome 


Sculpture 
Antinous— 
Antinous— 
Apollo Belvedere— 
Apollo Slaying a Lizard— 
Apoxiomenos— 
Ariadne Sleeping— 
Augustus, young— 
Augustus from Prima Porta— 
Cecilia, St. by Maderno— 
Daphne and Apollo by Bernini— 
Disk-Thrower— 
Disk-Thrower— 
Eros; Praxiteles— 
Fanciulla D’ Anzio— 
Faun (“the Marble’’?)— 
Faun, Dancing— 
Gaul Dying (The Dying Gladiator)— 
Horse Tamers— 
Juno Ludovisi— 
Juno of the Palatine— 
Laocoon— 
Marcus Aurelius (bronze)— 
Meleager— 
Mercury Belvedere— 
Moses, Michelangelo— 


Pieta, Michelangelo— 
Pliny’s Doves (mosaic)— 
Pompey— 

Sophocles— 

Thorn Extractor (bronze)— 
Torso Belvedere— 
Venus, Canova— 

Venus, Birth of— 

Venus of the Capitol— 
Venus of Cnidos— 
Venus of Cyrene— 
Wolf— 


Paintings 
Aurora, Guido Reni Pallavicini— 


Coronation of the Virgin, Raphael— 
Crucifixion, Guido Reni— 


Capitoline Museum 
Vatican Museum 
Vatican Museum 
Vatican Museum 
Vatican 
Vatican 
Vatican 
Vatican 
Church of St. Cecilia 
Borghese Museum 
Vatican Museum 
National Museum 
Vatican Museum 
National Museum 
Capitoline Museum 
Borghese Museum 
Capitoline Museum 
Quirinal Hill 
National Museum 
National Museum 
Vatican Museum 
Capitoline Hill 
Vatican Museum 
Vatican Museum 
Church of St. Peter in 
Chains 
Basilica of St. Peter 
Capitoline Museum 
Palazzo Spada 
Lateran Museum 
Capitoline Museum 
Vatican Museum 
Borghese Museum 
National Museum 
Capitoline Museum 
Vatican Museum 
National Museum 
Capitcline Museum 


Rospiglioso Palace 

Vatican Pinacoteca, 

Church of S. Lorenzo 
in Lucina 


144 THE GENESIS OF CHRISTIAN ART 


Danae, Correggio— Borghese Gallery 
Fornarina, Raphael— Barberini Gallery 
Glory of the Eucharist, Raphael— Stanza in the Vatican 
Innocent X, Velasquez— . Doria Gallery 

_ Last Judgment, Michelangelo— Sistine Chapel 
Madonna di Foligno, Raphael— Vatican Pinacoteca 
Psyche and Love, Raphael— Stanza, Vatican 
School of Athens, Raphael— Stanza, Vatican 
St. Jerome, Domenichino— Vatican Pinacoteca — 
Sacred and Profane Love, Titian— Borghese Gallery 
Transfiguration, Raphael— Vatican Pinacoteca 


Important Paintings vn the Pittr Palace 


There are two chief art galleries in Florence, the Pitti 
Palace and the Uffizi. Both contain a wealth of art and 
are deserving of careful study. Both contain also many 
of the great masterpieces of the Venetian and Florentine 
painters. The Pitti Palace was begun in 1441 by Luca 
Pitti, a wealthy and ambitious rival of the Medici and 
Strozzi, a successful merchant and a leading politician. 

Here will be found the paintings of such important 
artists as Raphael, Tit'an, Rubens, Tintoretto, Peru- 
gino, Velasquez, Botticelli, Veronese and Fra Lippo 
Lippi. 


Madonna of the Chair— Raphael 
Madonna of the Grand Duke— Raphael 
Vision of Ezekiel— Raphael 
Madonna of the Baldacchino— Raphael 
Pope Leo X— Raphael 
La Donna Velata— Raphael 
Angelo Doni— Raphael 
Bella— Titian 
Magdalene— Titian 
Marriage of St. Catherine— Titian 
Howard, Duke of Norfolk— Titian 
Venus and Vulcan with Cupid— Tintoretto 
Descent from the Cross— Tintoretto 
Pallas and the Centaur— Botticelli 
Madonna of the Rose— Botticelli 
Adam and Eve— Albert Diirer 
Mars preparing for War— Rubens 


The Four Philosophers— Rubens 


PAINTINGS IN EUROPEAN 


Holy Family— 

Madonna and Child 

The Virgin Enthroned— 

Pieta— 

The Madonna of the Pomegranate— 
Madonna and Child— 

Philip IV of Spain— 

The Concert— 

Nymph and Satyr— 
Magdalene— 

The Deposition from the Cross— 
St. John Asleep— 


GALLERIES 


Rubens 

Murillo 

Fra Bartolommeo 
Fra Bartolommeo 
Fra Lippo Lippi 
Fra Lippo Lippi 
Velasquez 
Giorgione 
Giorgione 
Perugino 
Perugino 

Carlo Dolci 


145 


St. Benedict among the Saints in Heaven—Veronese 


The Three Maries at the Sepulchre— 
Young Bacchus— 

Cardinal Bentivoglio— 

The Holy Family— 


Veronese 

Guido Reni 

Van Dyck 
Andrea del Sarto 


Important Paintings in the Uffizi 


The Madonna of the Gold-finch— 
Venus Reposing— 

Flora— 

The Birth of Venus— 

Judith— 

Calumny— 

The Madonna of the Magnificat— 
The Coronation of the Virgin— 
Primavera— 

The Annunciation— 

The Holy Family— 

The Madonna of the Harpies— 
The Coronation of the Virgin— 
The Virgin Adoring the Child— 
The Adoration of the Kings— 
Durer’s Father— 

The Flight into Egypt— 

The Holy Family— 

The Entombment— 

The Visitation— 

The Annunciation of the Virgin— 
Adoration of the Magi— 

Moses rescued from the Waters— 


Raphael 

Titian 

Titian 

Botticelli 
Botticelli 
Botticelli 
Botticelli 
Botticelli 
Botticelli 
Botticelli 
Michelangelo 
Andrea del Sarto 
Lorenzo Monaco 
Fra Lippo Lippi 
Ghirlandaio 
Albert Diirer 
Correggio 

Titian 

Van der Weyden 
Albertinelli 
Lorenzo di Credi 
Lorenzo Monaco 
Paolo Veronese 


Important Paintings in the Academy of Venice 
Venice is the art city of the Bellinis, Giorgione, Titian, 


Tintoretto, Veronese, and Carpaccio, 


It remained 


146 THE GENESIS OF CHRISTIAN ART 


longer under the Byzantine spell and influence than any 
other city of northern or central Italy. The Vivarini of 
Murano were the first to throw off the yoke of the 
Byzantine traditions. Of the Venctian painters of 
Christian art, Giovanni Bellini, who was the teacher of 
Giorgione and Titian, has the truest and deepest and 
most touching piety. Giorgione, however, may be 
regarded as the first great Venetian of the Renaissance. 
Veronese could not paint a satisfactory Madonna. For 
this his art was too scenic. 


The Presentation in the Temple— Titian 
The Assumption— Titian 
Paradise— Antonio and Giovanni 
Vivarini 

St. Barbara— Bartolommeo Vivarini 
Madonna and Child— Alvise Vivarini 
Madonna with the Two Trees— Giovanni Bellini 
Madonna of San Giobbe— Giovanni Bellini 
Madonna with St. Catherine and Mary 

Magdalene— Giovanni Bellini 
Madonna and Child— Jacopo Bellini 
Miracle of the Holy Cross— Gentile Bellini 
St. George and the Dragon— Andrea Mantegna 
Miracle of St. Mark— Tintoretto 
Death of Abel— Tintoretto 
Portrait of a Man— Tintoretto 
The Annunciation— Antonio Veneziano 
The Annunciation— Veronese 
Venice Enthroned— Veronese 
Holy Family— Veronese 
Ursula’s Dream— Carpaccio 
Parable of the Rich Man— Bonifazio 
Adoration of the Magi— Bonifazio 
Fisherman Returning the Ring to the 

Doge— Paris Bordone 
St. Joseph with Child Jesus, accompanied 

by Four Saints— Tiepolo 
St. Helena Finding the Holy Cross— Tiepolo 
Martyrdom of St. Bartholomew— Ribera 


Christ and the Daughter of the Woman of 
Canaan— Palma Vecchio 


PAINTINGS IN EUROPEAN GALLERIES 147 
Important Paintings in the Imperial Gallery, Vienna 


The Imperial Gallery in Vienna is not inferior to the 
best galleries of northern Europe. Most of the Schools 
—German, Flemish, Dutch, Italian, and Spanish, are 
well represented here. Such masters of painting as 
Velasquez and Rubens are well represented, as is 
Holbein, by several portraits. Rembrandt appears but 
little here, though both Van Dyck and Durer are repre- 
sented. Rubens may be studied here in the St. Ildefonso 
altar-piece and a number of other paintings. 


The Miracle of St. Ildefonso— Rubens 
Helen Fourment— Rubens 
The Worship of Venus— Rubens 
Christ Mourned— Rubens 
Cimon and Iphigenia— Rubens 
Portrait of the Artist— Rubens 


The Holy Family under the Apple Tree— Rubens 
St. Ambrose and the Emperor Theodosius—Rubens 


Diana and Callisto— Titian 

Danae— Titian 

The Madonna of the Cherries— Titian 

Johann Frederik of Saxony— Titian 

The Gipsy Madonna— Titian 

Ecce Homo— Titian 

The Entombment— Titian 

A Nymph and Shepherd— Titian 

The Conversion of St. Paul— Peter Brueghel (the 
Elder) 

Peasant Wedding— Peter Brueghel (the 
Elder) 

The Way to Calvary— Peter Brueghel (the 
Elder) 

The Apostle St. Paul— Rembrandt 

Portrait of the Painter— Rembrandt 

Ganymede borne through the air by the 

Eagle— Correggio 

Susanna and the Elders— Tintoretto 

David with the Head of Goliath— Giorgione 

The Three Philosophers— Giorgione 

Madonna and Child— Hans Memling 

Adoration of the Trinity— Diirer 


Martyrdom of Ten Thousand Christians—Diirer 


148 THE GENESIS OF CHRISTIAN ART 


The Feast of the Rose Garlands— Diirer 
Madonna and Child— Diirer 
Venus and Vulcan— ; Van Dyck 
’ Samson and Delilah— Van Dyck 
Venus and Vulcan— Van Dyck 
Virgin and Child Enthroned— Van Dyck 
Prince Carl Ludwig— Van Dyck 
The Madonna of the Meadow— Raphael 
Infant John the Baptist— Murillo 
The Madonna under the Orange Tree— Cimabue 
Pieta— Andrea del Sarto 


Important Paintings in the Hermitage, Leningrad 


The Hermitage Museum in Leningrad was founded 
by Catherine the Great, originally in a small pavilion 
attached to the Winter Palace, in 1765. The Hermitage 
gallery is composed of several celebrated collections of 
paintings. One of these is known as the Walpole col- 
lect on, which was purchased in 1779 for £35,000. The 
Gallery at present contains between 1600 and 1700 
pictures. The Italian School is represented in the 
gallery by 331 pictures, the Spanish by 115, the Flemish, 
Dutch, and German by 944, the English by 8, the 
French by 172, while the specimens of native art are 65 
innumber. The gal ery is especially rich in the Spanish 
and Flemish collections, having no less than 20 Murillos 
and 6 Velasquezes, 60 Rubens, 34 Van Dycks, 40 Teniers, 
41 Rembrandts, 4 Ruisdaels and an equal number of 
Snyders. | 

The Hermitage is generally regarded as one of the 
finest art galleries in Europe. In Spanish works it is 
only excelled by the Prado and the Louvre; and only in 
the Louvre is the French School better represented. As 
to the Flemish it is at least equal to that of any other 
European collection, while in Dutch paintings, espe- 
cially in examples of Rembrandt, it ranks first of all. 


PAINTINGS IN EUROPEAN 


Abraham Entertaining the Angels 
Unawares— 

Joseph’s Coat of Many Colours— 

The Holy Family— 

The Return of the Prodigal Son— 

The Denial of St. Peter— 

The Descent from the Cross— 

The Danae— 

Rembrandt’s Mother with her Bible— 

Sobieski— 

Madonna and Child— 

Expulsion of Hagar— 


GALLERIES 149 


Rembrandt 
Rembrandt 
Rembrandt 
Rembrandt 
Rembrandt 
Rembrandt 
Rembrandt 
Rembrandt 
Rembrandt 
Rubens 

Rubens 


Jesus in the House of Simon the Pharisee—Rubens 


Virgin and Child— 

Portrait of Helen Fourment— 

Venus and Adonis— 

Philip IV of Spain and his Wife— 

Mary Magdalene Washing Our Saviour’s 
Feet— 

Holy Family— 

The Assumption— 

Immaculate Conception— 

St. Peter in Prison— 

Annunciation— 

Jacob’s Ladder— 

Vision of St. Anthony— 

Benediction of Jacob— 

St. Joseph and the Christ Child— 

Jacob’s Dream— 

Boy with the Dog— 

Adoration of the Shepherds— 

Madonna of the Duke of Alba— 

The Connestabile Madonna— 

St. George— 

The Adoration of the Magi— 

Mary Magdalene— 

Ecce Homo— 

Pope Paul III— 


Rubens 
Rubens 
Rubens 
Rubens 


Rubens 
Murillo 
Murillo 
Murillo 
Murillo 
Murillo 
Murillo 
Murillo 
Murillo 
Murillo 
Murillo 
Murillo 
Murillo 
Raphael 
Raphael 
Raphael 
Botticelli 
Titian 
Titian 
Titian 


Madonna and Child with Mary Magdalene—Titian 


Portrait of Isabella Brandt, first wife of 
Rubens— 

Sir Thomas Wharton— 

Archbishop Laud— 

Philip IV— 

The Duke of Olivarez— 

Dispute of the Doctors— 

St. Francis— 


Van Dyck 
Van Dyck 
Van Dyck 
Velasquez 
Velasquez 
Guido Reni 
Guido Reni 


150 THE GENESIS OF CHRISTIAN ART 


The Virgin at School— Guido Reni 
The Virgin as a Child— Zurbaran 
Ecce Homo— Ribera 
Descent from the Cross— Veronese 
Finding of Moses— Veronese 
Cardinal Reginald Pole, Archbishop of 

Canterbury Sebastian del Piombo 
St. John the Evangelist— Carlo Doleci 
Judith—- Giorgione 
SS. Peter and Paul— El Greco 
Virgin and Child and SS. Dominic and 

Thomas Aquinas— Fra Angelico 
Madonna— Leonardo da Vinci 
Holy Family— . Leonardo da Vinci 
Holy Virgin— Francia 


Important Paintings in the Berlin Museum 


This gallery is the result of purchases made during 
the past century. The nucleus of the gallery is made up 
of the Giustiani collection purchased in 1814, the Solly 
collection bought in 1821, and a selection of pictures 
from the royal palaces in 1829. ‘There are two rooms 
representing Italian Primitives and many pictures by 
such painters as Squarcione, Mantegna, Bellini, Cossa, 
Signorelli, Pollaiuolo, Fra Lippo Lippi, and Botticelli. 
There is, too, a good representation of sixteenth-century 
masters such as Raphael, Correggio, Lotto, Titian, 
Giorgione, Tintoretto, and Tiepolo. 

The Flemish School is represented here by the Van 
Kycks, Bouts, Christus, Memling, Van der Weyden, 
Metsys, and Gossart. There are 26 Rubens and 12 Van 
Dycks. The Germans are here in Cranach, Holbein, 
and Direr and the Dutch in Steen, Frans Hals, and 
Rembrandt. There are 26 paintings of the latter. 


The Mocking of Christ— Van Dyck 
Nymphs Surprised by Satyrs— Van Dyck 
Portrait of a Genoese Lady— Van Dyck 


Madonna and Child (Solly Madonna)— Raphael 
Madonna and St. Jerome— Raphael 


PAINTINGS IN EUROPEAN GALLERIES 151 


Madonna, Child, and St. John— 
Madonna Terra Nuova— 

The Colonna Madonna— 

Anslo the Mennonite Preacher— 
Susanna— 

Saskia— 

’ Daniel’s Vision— 

Man with the Golden Helmet— 
Portiphar’s Wife accusing Joseph— 
Old Man with the Red Cap— 
Isabella Brandt— 

Conversion of St. Paul— 

The Repentant Magdalene— 
Venus and Adonis— 

St. Cecilia— 

The Raising of Lazarus— 

St. Sebastian— 


Raphael 
Raphael 
Raphael 
Rembrandt 
Rembrandt 
Rembrandt 
Rembrandt 
Rembrandt 
Rembrandt 
Rembrandt 
Rubens 
Rubens 
Rubens 
Rubens 
Rubens 
Rubens 
Rubens 


Diana with Nymphs surprised by Satyrs—Rubens 


Madonna and Child— 
Portrait of a Man— 


Madonna and Child— 

Rest in Egypt— 

The Fountain of Youth— 

Cardinal Albert of Brandenburg— 

Portrait of Jacob Muffel— 

Portrait of Jerome Holzschurer— 

Madonna of the Finch— 

Portrait of a Young Woman— 

Madonna and Saints— 

The Magdalene— 

Madonna, Child and Donor— 

Dead Christ with Angels— 

Portrait of a Young Man— 

St. Dominic and St. Francis— 

The Last Judgment— 

Portrait of Giuliano dei Medici— 

The Smoker— 

Martyrdom of St. Agatha— 

Mariana, Sister of Philip IV— 

Three Musicians— 

St. Bonaventure— 

Madonna and Child with SS. Mark and 
Luke— 

Titian’s Daughter, Lavinia— 

Portrait of a Man— 

Nurse and Child— 


Fra Lippo Lippi 

Hans Holbein (the 
Younger) 

Cranach (the Elder) 

Cranach (the Elder) 

Cranach (the Elder) 

Cranach (the Elder) 

Diirer 

Diirer 

Diirer 

Diirer 

Carpaccio 

Quentin Metsys 

Gentile Bellini 

Giovanni Bellini 

Giorgione 

Fra Angelico 

Fra Angelico 

Botticelli 

Terborch 

Tiepolo 

Velasquez 

Velasquez 

Zurbaran 


Tintoretto 
Titian 

Frans Hals 
Frans Hals 


152 THE GENESIS OF CHRISTIAN ART 
Important Paintings vn the Dresden Gallery 


This has been a famous gallery for many years. Here 
is found the celebrated Sistine Madonna. Augustus ITI, 
whose reign extended from 1733 to 1763, began by 
making additions to this gallery. He, as well as his 
successors, picked up a large number of celebrated 
canvases. In this gallery will be found the splendid 
Cucina pictures by Paolo Veronese, the three superb 
Palma Vecchios, the Venus of Giorgione, The Tribute 
Money of Titian, the Lottos, the Tintorettos. Except 
in Parma, Correggio can be best studied here. The 
elder Cranach and Diirer and Holbein are also well 
represented. There are too the Rembrandts and 12 
Ruisdaels and several good Steens and Vermeers to be 
seen. Likewise the Ferrarese School is represented 
here. Of the Flemish School there are 26 by Rubens, 6 
by Jordaens, and 26 by Van Dyck. The French School, 
beginning with Claude and Poussin, is better seen here 
than any place outside of Paris. 


The Sistine Madonna— Raphael 
The Holy Family— Mantegna 
Baptism of Christ— Francia 
Abraham offering up Isaac— Andrea del Sarto 
The Four Fathers of the Church— Dosso Dossi 
Minerva and Neptune— Garofalo 
Madonna and Saints— Titian 
The Tribute Money— Titian 
The Girl with the Fan— Titian 
Holy Family— Titian 
The Man with the Palm— Titian 
Marriage at Cana— Veronese 
Madonna of the Cuccina Family— Veronese 
Adoration of the Magi— Veronese 
Death of St. Clara— Murillo 
St. Rodriguez— Murillo 
St. Bonaventure praying before the Papal 

Crown— Zurbaran 


St. Peter delivered from Prison by an Angel—Ribera 


PAINTINGS IN EUROPEAN 


GALLERIES 


Diogenes with the Lantern— Ribera 
St. Agnes— Ribera 
The Rescue— Tintoretto 
The Holy Family— Tintoretto 
Six Women with Musical Instruments— __ Tintoretto 
Jacob saluting Rachel— Palma Vecchio 
St. Jerome— Rubens 
Mercury and Argus— Rubens 
Venus Sleeping— Giorgione 
Madonna of St. Francis— Correggio 
Nativity or Holy Night— Correggio 
The Cheat— Correggio 
Magdalene— Correggio 
Madonna and Child with St. John the 

Baptist— Lotto 
Venus Reclining with Cupid— Guido Reni 
Count of Olivares— Velasquez 
Portrait of a Man— Velasquez 
Venus Reposing— Poussin 
Pan and Syrinx Poussin 
Acis and Galatea— Claude Lorrain 
The Love Feast— Watteau 
A Garden Party— Watteau 
Mr. Will James— Reynolds 
Christ Healing the Blind Man— El Greco 
The Baptism of Christ— Francia 
Manoah’s Offering— Rembrandt 
Saskia with the Red Flower— Rembrandt 


153 


Important Paintings in the Pinacothek, Munich 


This is one of the best known galleries in Europe. 
Albert V (1550-79) brought together the first collection 
of pictures and William V helped to increase it, but the 
great impulse came from Maximilian, first elector of 
Bavaria. In 1805 the paintings of the Dusseldorf 
Gallery were removed to Munich to escape being taken 
to Paris. It was at this time that the Munich Gallery 
gained possession of so many of the paintings by 
Rubens. The addition of the Boisserée Collection of 
Rhenish Art in 1827 added greatly to the representation 
of German art in the gallery. 


154 THE GENESIS OF CHRISTIAN ART 


Rubens and Van Dyck are especially well represented 
and Rembrandt fairly well. Among the Italians are Fra 
Lippo Lippi, Botticelli, Ghirlandaio and Andrea del 
Sarto. There are 3 Raphaels and 8 Titians, with Palma 
Vecchio’s Faun, Lotto’s Marriage of St. Catherine, and 
several pictures by Tintoretto including Christ in the 
House of Mary and Martha. | 


Death of Seneca— Rubens 
Madonna and Child— Rubens 
Fall of the Damned— Rubens 
The Last Judgment— Rubens 
Battle of the Amazons— Rubens 
Rubens and His First Wife, Isabella Brandt—Rubens 
Helen Fourment and her Son— Rubens 
The Conversion of St. Paul— Rubens 
The Lion Hunt— Rubens 
Rape of the Daughters of Leucippus— Rubens 
Christ on the Cross— Rubens 
The Entombment— Rubens 
Portrait of a Turk— Rembrandt 
Raising of the Cross— Rembrandt 
The Ascension of Christ— Rembrandt 
Portrait of the Painter— Rembrandt 
The Tempi Madonna— Raphael 
The Canigiani Madonna— Raphael — 
Portrait of an Architect— Tintoretto 
Christ in the House of Mary and Martha—Tintoretto 
Card Players Quarrelling— Jan Steen 
Portrait of Charles V— Titian 
Vanitas— Titian 
Portrait of a Man— Titian 
Madonna and Child— Titian 

The Crowning with Thorns— Titian 
Portrait of a Venetian Noble— Titian 
Portrait of a Young Man— Velasquez 
Portrait of the Painter— Velasquez 
Adoration of Kings— Veronese 
St. Luke Drawing the Virgin— Roger van der Weyden 
Boy and Dog— Terborch 
Portrait of a Man— Terborch 
Portrait of a Woman— Terborch 
Marriage of St. Catherine— Lotto 

The Last Supper— Giotto 


Christ on the Cross— 


Van Dyck 


PAINTINGS IN EUROPEAN GALLERIES 155 


Portrait of George Petel— Van Dyck 
Portrait of Duke of Pfalz-Neuburg— Van Dyck 
Madonna, Child and St. John— Van Dyck 
St. Francis of Assisi— Zurbaran 


The Betrayal— 
Resurrection of Christ— 


Thierri Bouts 
Thierri Bouts 


Madonna of the Rose Garden— Francia 

Portrait of St. Bryan Tuke— Hans Holbein 

Deposition— _ Diirer 

Portrait of the Painter— Diirer 

Lucretia— Diirer 

Portrait of Oswald Krell— Diirer 

Young Satyr playing on a Syrinx— Palma Vecchio 

The Disrobing of Christ— El Greco 

Street Urchins— Murillo 

The Seven Joys of the Virgin— Memling 

Annunciation— Master of the Life of 
the Virgin 

Presentation of the Virgin— Master of the Life of 
the Virgin 


A Drinking Shop— 
Portrait of a Young Woman— 


Michael Sweerts 
Bartolommeo 
Veneziano 
Carpaccio 
Petrus Christus 


Madonna, Child and St. John— 
Madonna, Child and St. Jerome— 


Important Paintings in the Rigks Museum, Amsterdam 


This gallery contains the most important collection of 
Dutch pictures in the world. In truth this collection is 
so Important that without reference to it Dutch art 
cannot be comprehended in whole or in part. The 
paintings too as pictorial documents are illustrative of 
Dutch history. No need to say that this gallery is rich 
in Rembrandts, Frans Hals, Paul Potters and Ruisdaels. 

The nucleus of the collection was the various pictures 
from the palaces of William V which were brought 
together in Amsterdam in 1808 under King Louis 
Bonaparte. 


The Night Watch— 
Portrait of Elizabeth Bas— 
The Jewish Bride— 


Rembrandt 
Rembrandt 
Rembrandt 


156 THE GENESIS OF CHRISTIAN ART 


Syndics of the Cloth Hall— Rembrandt 
Portrait of a Young Lady of Rank— Rembrandt 
Portrait of a Young Man— Albert Cuyp 
The Jolly Toper— Frans Hals 

The Merry Andrew— ‘Frans Hals 
Helen Fourment— Rubens 

Noli me Tangere— Rubens 

After a Drinking Bout Jan Steen 

The Sick Lady— Jan Steen 

The Dancing Lesson— Jan Steen 
Horses in a Field— Paul Potter 

The Holy Trinity— Garofalo 

Prince William II and the Princess Mary—Van Dyck 

Old Woman Spinning— Nicholas Maes 
Portrait of Kortenaer— B. Van der Helst 
Banquet of the Civic Guard— B. Van der Helst 
The Pantry— Pieter de Hooch 
Landscape— Ruisdael 


Important Paintings in the Brussels Museum 


One is not disappointed in going to the Royal 
Museum at Brussels to study Flemish art. There is also 
a good representation here of the Primitives of Flanders. 
Burgundy and the French borderland. Of the early 
Flemish art one finds there the Adam and Eve of Van 
Kyck, the tragic Pieté of Van der Weyden, and a St. 
Sebastian by Memling. In fact Flemish art of all time 
is well represented here. The two great Flemish 
painters, master and pupil, Rubens and Van Dyck, are 
represented here and an opportunity is given here also 
to get a proper idea of Jordaens. There is, however, 
little of Rembrandt in this gallery, though Hals and 
Vermeer and Maes, of the Dutch School, are represented 
by some very good portraits. 


Aeneas Hunting— Claude Lorraine 
Adam and Eve— Cranach (the Elder) 
Adoration of the Magi— Gerard David 

The Enumeration at Bethlehem— Peter Brueghel 


Christ in the House of Mary and Martha—Peter Aertsen 
St. Sebastian— Memling 


PAINTINGS IN EUROPEAN GALLERIES 157 


Satyr with Peasants— Jacob Jordeans 
Allegory of Fecundity— Jacob Jordaens 
Triumph of Bacchus— Jacob Jordeans 
Susanna and the Elders— Jacob Jordeans 
Portrait of Francois Duquesnoy— Van Dyck 
Adam and Eve— Hubert Van Eyck 
Portrait of an Old Woman— Rembrandt 
Coronation of the Virgin— Rubens 
The Assumption of the Blessed Virgin— Rubens 
The Woman taken in Adultery— Rubens 
St. Francis Protecting the World— Rubens 
The Ascent of Calvary— Rubens 
Adoration of the Magi— Rubens 
Venus at the Forge of Vulean— Rubens 
Portrait of Helen Fourment— Rubens 
The Kermesse— Tenier (the Younger) 
The Village Doctor— Tenier (the Younger) 
Portrait of Jean Hoornebeck— Frans Hals 
The Emperor Otho making Reparation for 

His Injustice— Thierri Bouts 
Legend of St. Anne— Quentin Metsys 


Important Paintings in the Antwerp Museum 


We naturally look to the Antwerp gallery as a good 
place to study the work of Rubens and Van Dyck. Nor 
are we disappointed in this hope. In truth this art 
gallery is in every way very satisfying to the student of 
Flemish art. It has not only a good representation of 
these two great Flemish masters, but it possesses a 
goodly number of paintings of the earlier and lesser 
Flemish artists. 


Last Communion of St. Francis— . Rubens 
Education of the Virgin— Rubens 

Christ between Two Thieves— ‘ Rubens 

Christ on the Cross— Rubens 

The Dead Christ— Rubens 

Pieta— Rubens 
Portrait of Jan Malderns— Van Dyck 
Entombment— Van Dyck 
Christ on the Cross— Van Dyck 

John the Fearless— Hubert and Jan 


Van Eyck 


158 THE GENESIS OF CHRISTIAN ART 


A Dutch Nobleman— Frans Hals 

Meleager and Atlanta— Frans Hals 

Spinelli— _Hans Memling 

Deposition— Quentin Metsys 

Portrait of a Woman— Rembrandt 

Drinkers— Tenier (the Younger) 

Bishop of Paphos Presented to St. Peter by 

Pope Alexander VI— Titian 

Annunciation— ; Roger Van der Weyden 

Portrait of Philippe de Croy— Roger Van der Weyden 

Triptych of the Seven Sacraments— Roger Van der Weyden 

Sermon on the Mount— Peter Brueghel (the 
Elder) 

Visit to the Farm— Peter Brueghel (the 
Elder) 

The Wedding Procession— Peter Brueghel (the 
Younger) 

The Way to Calvary— Peter Brueghel (the 
Younger) . 

Massacre of the Innocents— Peter Brueghel (the © 
Younger) 

The Dauphin—Son of Francis I— Jean Clouet 

Adam and Eve— Cranach (the Elder) 

The Holy Woman— Gerard David 

The Way to Calvary— Peter Aertsen 


Important Paintings in the Louvre, Paris 


This is the largest collection of pictures in Europe and 
in many respects the most famous. The private 
collection of Francis I was its first nucleus. Then Louis 
XIV added to it and placed the paintings in the Louvre. 
At one time half the masterpieces of Europe were in 
Paris. The gallery contains many paintings of the early 
Renaissance artists and of the High Renaissance it — 
possesses many of the works of Raphael, Leonardo da 
Vinci, Giorgione, Veronese, Titian, Palma Vecchio and 
Lotto. Spanish painting is represented by Murillo, 
Ribera, El Greco, Goya and Velasquez. The German 
painters Holbein and Cranach, the Flemish Rubens and 
Van Dyck and the Dutch Rembrandt and Hals are also 
represented here as well as some Flemish Primitives. 


PAINTINGS IN EUROPEAN GALLERIES 159 


St. Michael and the Dragon— 

La Vierge au Voile— 

St. George— 

La Belle Jardiniere— 

The Virgin of the Blue Diadem— 

The Holy Family of Francis I— 

St. John the Baptist in the Desert— 

Portrait of Balthazar Castiglione— 

Portrait of Jeanne of Aragon— 

The Virgin of the Rabbit— 

The Holy Family— 

The Repast during the Flight— 

The Entombment— 

St. Jerome— 

The Pilgrim of Emmaus— 

Christ being Crowned with Thorns— 

Francis I— 

The Man with a Glove— 

Erasmus— 

Archbishop Warham 

Portrait of Richard SouthweH— 

Nicholas Kratzer— 

Anne of Cleves— 

The Kitchen of the Angels— 

The Virgin of the Rosary— 

A Little Beggar Boy— 

The Birth of the Virgin— 

The Immaculate Conception— 

The Holy Family— 

Ambassador to Spain— 

The Angelus— 

The Gleaners— 

Portrait of Hendrickje Stoffels— 

La Vierge aux Donateurs— 

The Marquis of Aytona— 

Portrait of the Painter— 

A Venetian Senator— 

The Burning of Sodom— 

Susanna and the Elders— 

Calvary— 

Holy Family— 

Wedding Feast of Cana— 

The Repast at the House of Simon— 

The Pilgrim of Emmaus— 

St. Francis of Assisi Receiving the 
Stigmata— 


The Mystic Marriage of St. Catherine— Fra Bartolommeo 


Raphael 
Raphael 
Raphael 
Raphael 
Raphael 
Raphael 
Raphael 
Raphael 
Raphael 
Titian 
Titian 
Titian 
Titian 
Titian 
Titian 
Titian 
Titian 
Titian 
Holbein 
Holbein 
Holbein 
Holbein 
Holbein 
Murillo 
Murillo 
Murillo 
Murillo 
Murillo 
Murillo 
Murillo 
Millet 
Millet 
Rembrandt 
Van Dyck 
Van Dyck 
Tintoretto 
Tintoretto 
Veronese 
Veronese 
Veronese 
Veronese 
Veronese 
Veronese 
Veronese 


Giotto 


160 


THE GENESIS OF CHRISTIAN ART 

The Annunciation— Fra Bartolommeo 
A Young Spanish Woman witha Fan— Goya 
The Penitent Mary Magdalene— Guido Reni 
Christ Carrying the Cross— Luis Morales 
The Gipsy— Frans Hals 
The Holy Family— Andrea del Sarto 
Charity— Andrea del Sarto 
Christ and the Woman taken in Adultery—Lotto 
St. Jerome in the Desert— Lotto 
The Holy Family— Lotto 
The Virgin of the Rocks— Leonardo da Vinci 
La Belle Ferronniere— Leonardo da Vinci 
La Gioconda— Leonardo da Vinci 
St. John the Baptist— Leonardo da Vinci 
The Virgin, the nfant Jesus and St. Anne—Leonardo da Vinci 
The Virgin in Glory— Verrocchio 
The Triumph of St. Thomas— Benozzo Gozzoli 
The Virgin of the Victory— Mantegna 
Victory of Virtue over Vice— Mantegna 
Parnassus— Mantegna 
The Virgin and Child— Pinturicchio 
St. Sebastian— Perugino 
Madonna, Christ and St. John— Botticelli 
The Holy Family— Perugino 
The Combat between Love and Chastity—Perugino 
The Coronation of the Virgin— Fra Angelico 
Christ on the Cross— Francia 
The Holy Family— Luini 
The Sleeping Antiope— Correggio 
The Infanta Marguerita Maria— Velasquez 
Philip IV in Hunting Costume— Velasquez 
Don Pedro Moscoso de Altamira— Velasquez 
The Assembly of Artists— Velasquez 
St. Francis and a Novice— El Greco 
The Entombment— Ribera 
The Dead Christ on the Knees of the 

Virgin— ' Carracci 
The Hunt— Carracci 
The Funeral of a Bishop— Zurbaran 
The Flight of Lot— Rubens 
Christ on the Cross— Rubens 
Portrait of Marie de Medicis— Rubens 
Birth of Louis XIV at Fontainebleau— Rubens 
Coronation of Marie de Medicis— Rubens 
Apotheosis of Henry IV— Rubens 


Henry IV commits the Government to 
Marie de Medicis— Rubens 


PAINTINGS IN EUROPEAN GALLERIES 
Dante and Virgil in Hell— 


161 


Eugene Delacroix 


The Marriage at Cana— Gerard David 
A Rustic Concert— Giorgione 
Shepherds in Arcadia— Poussin 


Important Paintings in the National Gallery, London 


This is one of the best galleries in Europe possessing as 
it does three thousand pictures. It began with the 
Angerstein collection in 1824. This has been augmented 
by the gifts of various English collections, and additions 
have also been made to it from time to time by pur- 
chases made either by public subscription or Govern- 
ment grant. It was through these means that the 
gallery has secured such notable paintings as Raphael’s 
Ansidei Madonna, the Titian Ar:osto, and Holbein’s 
Duchess of Milan. 


Among the old masters Italian pictures take the lead. 
There is, too, a very good representation of Italian 
Primitives and the fifteenth century painters of Italy 
are represented by Fra Lippo Lippi, Botticelli, Lorenzo 
di Credi, Perugino, Costa and Mantegna; while Crivelli, 
the Paduan painter, is better represented here than in 
any other European gallery save that of Milan. 


Annunciation— Duccio 

Two Apostles— Giotto 
Coronation of the Virgin— Orcagna 
Battle of St. Egidio— Uccello 
Entombment of Our Lord— Michelangelo 
Ansidei Madonna— Raphael 

The Madonna of the Tower— Raphael 
Bacchus and Ariadne— Titian 
Portrait of Ariosto— Titian 


Virgin of the Rocks— 
Annunciation— 


Leonardo da Vinci 
Crivelli 


Adoration of the Magi— Fra Angelico 
Vision of St. Helena— Veronese 

Vision of St. Bernard— Fra Lippo Lippi 
Mercury and Venus instructing Cupid— _Correggio 


162 THE GENESIS OF CHRISTIAN ART 


Madonna della Casta— Correggio 
Annunciation— Fra Lippo Lippi 
Madonna with St. George, and Angel and 

the Donor— Memling 
A Canon and his Patron Saints— David 
Madonna and Child with St. John— Fra Bartolommeo 
The Ambassadors— Holbein 
Duchess of Milan— Holbein 
The Judgment of Paris— Rubens 
The Nativity— Botticelli 
A Betrothal— Velasquez 
A Jewish Rabbi— Rembrandt 
Portrait of a Man— Frans Hals 
Holy Family— Murillo 
Dona Isabel Corbo de Porecel— Goya 
Bacchanalia— Poussin 
Embarkation of St. Ursula— Claude Lorrain 
Portrait of Herself— La Brun 
Portrait of Mrs. Siddons— Lawrence 
The Parson’s Daughter— Romney 
Corn Field— _ Constable 
The Village Festival— Wilkie 
The Gleaners— Millet 
Crossing the Brook— Turner 
The Fighting Temeraire— Turner 
The Death of Nelson— Turner 
Aeneas Relating Her Story to Dido— Turner 
The Garden of the Hesperides— Turner 
The Garden of the Shepherds— Turner 
The Field of Waterloo— Turner 
The Graces Decorating a Statue of Hymen—Reynolds 
Heads of Angels— Reynolds 
The Age of Innocence— Reynolds 
Portrait of Admiral Keppel— Reynolds 
Mrs. Siddons— Gainsborough 
The Hay Wain— Copley 
The Marriage Contract— Hogarth 
Ophelia— Millais 
Shoeing the Bay Mare— Landseer 
The Horse Fair— Rosa Bonheur 


Important Paintings in the Prado, Madrid 


In proportion to the number of paintings, the Prado 
has perhaps more masterpieces than any other art 
gallery in Europe. It is not only the place—almost the 


PAINTINGS IN EUROPEAN GALLERIES 163 


sole place—to study Velasquez, but it is a good place to 
study Titian, Rubens, and Van Dyck. The Prado is not 
like the Louvre a treasure-house of the art of the world. 
It is rather the gallery of a collector or a group of 
connoisseurs. It is indeed a splendid patrimony that is 
enshrined in the Prado. 

In the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries Spain was 
closely allied with the Courts that were the great centres 
of art. It was in these years that the accumulation of 
the masterpieces that are the supreme glory of the Prado 
began. Even in the time of Ferdinand and Isabella 
there was much art appreciation at the Court of Spain, 
the latter being a great collector, especially of religious 
art. 

Charles V became a patron of art and through the 
great Venetian painter Titian enriched the Prado with a 
fine representation of the great Italian colourists. 
Titian is really the spiritual father of the Prado and is 
superb here in his paintings. Z—Then when Rubens came 
to Madrid on an embassy he brought amongst other 
things as gifts to the King a number of famous pictures. 
This was the very time that Velasquez was court 
painter at Madrid. Later Velasquez went to Italy to 
select paintings for the Prado. It was at this time that 
this great master painted the portrait of Pope Innocent 
X, now in the Doria Gallery in Rome. Let us say here 
that it is generally conceded by art critics that of the 
three great portrait painters—Rembrandt, Titian, and 
Velasquez—the great Spanish master stands at their 
head. In his Surrender of Breda, Velasquez has un- 
questionably given us the greatest historical painting in 
the world, 


164 YHE GENESIS OF CHRISTIAN ART 
Madonna and Child with St. Bridget and 


St. Hulpus— Titian 
The Bacchanals— Titian 
The Empress Isabella— Titian 
The Garden of Venus— Titian 
The Entombment of Christ— Titian 
Philip II— Titian 
The Emperor Charles V— Titian 
Original Sin— Titian 
The Holy Family with the Lamb— Raphael 
Spasimo di Sicilia— Raphael 
Holy Family with the Lizard— Raphael 
The Cardinal— Raphael 
Madonna of the Fish— Raphael 
Charity of St. Elizabeth of Hungary— Murillo 
The Virgin with the Infant Jesus in Her Lap—Murillo 
Rebecca and Eleazar— Murillo 
The Martyrdom of St. Andrew— Murillo 
A Galician Woman Counting Money— Murillo 
The Child Jesus as Shepherd— Murillo 
Woman Spinning— Murillo 
Father Cabanillas— Murillo 
The Children with the Shell— Murillo 
The Adoration of the Shepherds— Murillo 
The Three Graces— Rubens 
The Garden of Love— Rubens 
The Ronda— Rubens 
Maria de’ Medici— Rubens 
The Holy Family— Rubens 
Andromeda and Perseus— Rubens 
The Surrender of Breda— Velasquez 
The Spinners— Velasquez 
Los Borrachos (the Revellers)— Velasquez 
The Adoration of the Kings— Velasquez 
Don Baltazar Carlos— Velasquez 
Aesop— Velasquez 
Menippus— Velasquez 
Las Meninas— Velasquez 
The King in Uniform— Goya 
The Drinker— Goya 
The Queen in a Mantilla— Goya 
The Family of Charles I[V— Goya 
Disasters of War— Goya 
Charles [V— Goya 
The Annunciation— Fra Angelico 
The Death of the Virgin— Mantegna 


The Annunciation— El Greco 


PAINTINGS IN EUROPEAN GALLERIES 165 


The Holy Family— El Greco 
The Ascension— E] Greco 
St. Paul— El Greco 
Portrait of a Man— El! Greco 
The Crucifixion— El Greco 
Betrayal of Christ— Van Dyck 
Crown of Thorns— Van Dyck 
The Plague of Serpents— Van Dyck 
Portrait of the Painter— Diirer 
Hans Imhof— Diirer 
Portrait of a Man— Holbein 
The Virgin and the Child Jesus— 

with St. Anthony and St. Roque— Giorgione 
The Penitent Magdalene— Ribera 
The Martyrdom of St. Bartholomew— Ribera 
St. Andrew— Ribera 
St. Bartholomew— Ribera 
Ecstasy of St. Francis of Assisi— Ribera 
Mary Queen of England— Antonio Moro 
Philip II— Antonio Moro 
The Battle of Sea and Land— Tintoretto 
The Triumph of Religion— Jan van Eyck 
Moses Saved from the Waters of the Nile—Veronese 
The Adoration of the Kings— Memling 
Madonna and St. John— Andrea del Sarto 
Santa Casilda— Zurbaran 


The Child Jesus Asleep on the Cross— Zurbaran 





INDEX 


Aix-la-Chapelle, 62 

Albi, Cathedral of, 63 

Amiens, 76, 79 

Amsterdam, 155 

Andrea del Sarto, 152, 165 

Anglo-Saxons, 62 

Antwerp, 77, 92, 157 

Apostles, Church of the, 63 

Aquinas, Thomas, 118 

Architecture, 13, 15, 22, 26, 27 

Arezzo, 124 

Aristotle, 12 ff. 

Art: in ancient world, 11 ff.; the 
dawn of Christian art, 19 ff.; 
Roman, 23; Germanic, 28; 
Byzantine, 29 ff.; The Blessed 
Virgin in art, 31 ff.; saints in art, 
39 ff.; development of the Chris- 
tian idealin art, 52 ff.; Byzantine 
and Romanesque art, 58 ff.; full 
awakening of Christian art,65ff.; 
evolution of Gothic, 70 ff.; Cath- 
olic Church and Italian Renais- 
sance, 80ff.; where art seeds 
were quickened, 1386 ff.; mystic 
school, 109 ff.; racial contribu- 
tions, 136 ff.; galleries of Europe, 
142 ff. 

Asia, 11 

Asia Minor, 11 ff. 

Assisi, 90, 103 ff. 

Avignon, 102 


Babylon, 11 

Barcelona, 78 

Belgium, 139 

Bellini, 91 

Berlin, 150 

Blessed Virgin, The, 31 ff., 38, 68, 
138 


167 


Boccaccio, 104 

Bologna, 97 

Botticelli, 34, 120 ff., 144, 145, 151 

Bruges, Cathedral of, 00 

Brussels, 92, 156 

Burgos Cathedral, 78 

Byzantine art, 29 ff., 35, 55, 57 ff., 
89, 91, 103 

Byzantium, 25, 26 


Canterbury Cathedral, 75 

Carcassone, 63 

Castile, 77 

Catacombs, 20, 21 ff. 

Catholic Church and Italian Ren- 
aissance, 80 ff. 

Catholic Encyclopedia, The, 85 

Chaldea, 11 

Charlemagne, 63 

Chaucer, 82 

Christ in art, 20, 21, 22 

Church of Santa Constanza, 24 

Cimabue, 79, 86, 101 ff., 111 

Clusium, 17 

Cologne, 76, 92 

Colours in art, 40 

Constantine, 22, 24 

Constantinople, 24, 25 ff. 

Cordova, Cathedral of, 61 

Correggio, 103, 150, 153 

Cram, Ralph Adams, 27, 70 


Dante, 31, 44, 74, 81, 88, 102 

Da Vinci, Leonardo, 89, 120 ff., 
150, 160, 161 

Dei Medici, Lorenzo, 114, 128, 129 

Divine Comedy, 31, 44, 70, 82, 88, 
102 

Dominicans, 73, 105 

Donatello, 98, 99, 120 


168 


Dresden, 152 . 

Duccio, 79,86 ,__. 

Diirer, Albert, 93, 150, 152, 165 
Durham, Cathedral of, 62 


Egypt, 11, 86 

El Greco, 164, 165 
England, 62, 1388 
Ktrurian art, 88 
Etruscans, 17, 18 


Feudalism, 62 

Flanders, 156 

Florence, 87, 97, 103, 113, 116, 122, 
124, 144 

Fra Bartolommeo, 83 

Fra Lippo Lippi, 83, 85, 88, 114, 
121, 145, 151, 161 

France, 138 

Franciscans, 49, 73 


Galleries, chief art, 142 ff. 
Germanic art, 28, 138 

Ghent, 92’; 

Ghiberti, Lorenzo, 97, 103, 120 
Gillet, Louis, 23, 85 

Giotto, 79, 99 ff., 115, 161 
Gizeh, Museum of, 12 

Gothic Cathedrals, 67 ff., 70 ff. 
Gothic, evolution of, 71 ff. 
Gothic sculpture, 94 

Goya, 164 


Hals, Frans, 155 

Hermitage, The, 148 

History of Art, 72 

History of Gothic Art in England, 75 
Holbein, Hans, 155, 158, 161 
Humanism, 114, 1383, 134’ 


Iconoclasm, 54, 55 

Iffley, 62 

Ile de France, 73 

Immaculate Conception, 106 
Italian Gothic, 77 

Italy (of the Communes), 13 


La Gioconda, 123 
Last Supper, The, 123, 124 


INDEX 


Lincoln Cathedral, 78 
Lombard, 64 

London, 161 

Lorenzetti, 89 

Louvre, The, 158 

Lucca della Robbia, 100 
Luxor, 12 


Madonna, 31 ff., 100, 123 

Madrid, 162 ff. 

Maison Carée, 14 

Martino, 102 

Masons’ guild, 69 

Masterpieces, location of world’s: 
Rome, 1438; Florence, 144; Vi- 
enna, 147; Venice, 145; Lenin- 
grad, 148; Berlin, 150; Dresden, 
152; Munich, 153; Amsterdam, 
155; Brussels, 156; Antwerp, 
157; Louvre, Paris, 158; Na- 
tional Gallery, London, 161; 
Prado, Madrid, 162 

Memphite remains, 12 

Michelangelo, 98, 103, 120, 124 ff. 

Middle Ages, 65, 86 

Milan, 64, 123 

Millet, 159, 162 

Mona Lisa, 122, 123 

Moors, 64, 77 

Moslem, 64 

Murillo, 106, 148, 149, 159, 164 

Museum of St. John in Lateran, 21 

Mystics, 109 


Naples, 110 

Natali and Vitelli, quoted, 72 
National Gallery, 161 

Niczea, Second Council of, 54 
Nimbus, the, 50 

Normans, 62 


Orcagna, 105 


Padua, 103 

Paris, 158 

Painting, mystic school of, 109 ff. 
Parnassus, 133, 134 

Parthenon, 14 


INDEX 


Pavia, 64 

Pericles, 13 

Perugia, 90 

Perugino, 103, 110, 120 

Peterborough, Cathedral of, 62 

Petrarch, 102 

Phidias, 13, 14, 52 

Pieta, 124 

Pinacothek, The, 153 ff. 

Pisa, 95 

Pisano, Niccola, 79, 86, 89, 95 ff., 
120 

Pitti Palace, 144 

Poetry of Christian Art, 54 

Pompeii, 16, 17 

Porsena, tomb of, 17 

Prado, The, 162 ff. 

Praxiteles, 13, 14, 52 

Prior, Edward S., 75 

Provincia Romana, 56 


Race, 136 ff. 

Raphael, 35, 110, 120, 128, 144, 
145, 148, 149, 150, 151, 154, 158, 
159, 161, 164 

Ravenna, 25, 26, 32, 53, 59 

Rembrandt, 147, 149, 151, 153 ff., 
162 

Renaissance, Italian, 80 ff., 118, 
121. 

Rijks Museum, 155, 156 

Reynolds, Joshua, 162 

Romance art, 67 

Romanesque, 57 

Romans, 14 

Rome, 91, 92, 110, 142, 143 

Ruben’s, 144, 145, 147, 149, 151, 
153, 154, 156, 157, 160, 164 

Ruskin, John, 85, 88, 106, 111 


Sainte Chapelle, 79 

Saints in art, the, 39 ff. 
San Giovanni, 88 

San Lorenzo, 88 
Savonarola and art, 113 ff. 
Sculpture, 74 ff., 143 
Sibyls, the, 50 


169 


Sicily, 60 

Siena, 77, 87, 90 

Spain, 140, 141 

Speyer, 76 

St. Agnes, 21 

St. Anthony of Padua, 47 

St. Augustine, 42, 43 

St. Callista, 21 

St. Catherine of Siena, 46, 47 

St. Clement, Basilica of, 22, 24 

St. Cyprian, 26 

St. Cecilia, 45, 46 

St. Benedict, 43, 72 

St. Francis of Assisi, 41, 68, 103, 
109 

St. Dominic, 42, 68, 107, 116 

St. George of Cappadocia, 50, 99 

St. John the Evangelist, 45, 99 

St. James the Greater, 49 

St. John Lateran, 24, 25, 104 

St. John Baptist, 44, 45, 98 

St. Louis, 49, 67 

St. Mary Magdalene, 48 

St. Mark’s, 55, 60, 61, 91, 138 

St. Mark’s, Basilica of, 30 

St. Mark, 22, 99 

St. Matthew, 22 

St. Michael, 41 

St. Luke, 22 

St. Peter, 22, 46, 99 

St. Peter’s (Basilica), 24, 138 

St. Thomas Aquinas, 43, 82 

St. Teresa, 48 

Strasburg, 76 

Summca Theologica, 70, 82 


Tintoretto, 144, 146, 147, 154 

Titian, 137, 138 ff., 144, 145, 146, 
147, 149, 151, 152, 154, 158, 159, 
164 

Toledo, 64, 78 

Toulouse, 63 

Transfiguration, The, 124 

Tréves, Cathedral of, 63 

Triumph of the Cross, 118 

Turner, 162 

Tuscan, 64 

Tuscany, 109 


170 INDEX 


Twelve Apostles, 21 Velasquez, 154, 164 

Twelve Labours, The, 116 Venetian School, 91 
Venice, 91, 110, 137, 145, 146 

Uffizi, 144, 145 Verona, 64 

Umbrians, 110 Vetii brothers, House of, 17 
Virgil, 17 

Van Dyck, 148, 149, 150, 156, 157, ® 

159, 165 Westminster Abbey, 76 
Van Eyck, Hubert, 92 Worms, Cathedral of, 63 


Van Eyck, Jan, 92 
Vatican, 92, 143 Zurbaran, 151, 152, 165 


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N7832 .036 
The nt of Christian art, 


n Theological Seminary—Speer Lib 


NUN 


1 1012 00142 6586 





